Alaska glaciers melt faster than thought (Matt Volz)

  By MATT VOLZ -- Associated Press

  JUNEAU, Alaska -- Less than 10 minutes after lifting off from the airport, the helicopter entered the frozen world suspended above Alaska's capital.

  Snowcapped mountains rose on either side as the small team of scientists and students peered down at a jagged blue carpet of ice below. The pilot turned up one arm of Mendenhall Glacier only to find the way blocked by a wall of fog. The storm was moving in; the work would have to be done quickly.

  Hydrologist Eran Hood used a handheld global positioning system to guide the pilot higher up the ice field on a clearer path. Circling low, the scientists spotted what they were after: A tiny pyramid of wire nearly invisible in the field of white.

  In this lonely corner of an ice field larger than Rhode Island, the packed snow crunching under their boots, the group set up shop. They were about to find out just how much this part of the glacier had melted over the summer and how fast it was moving.

  Hood and physicist Matt Heavner, his colleague at the University of Alaska Southeast, measured at least 10 feet of ice loss since May there and at two other spots on the glacier.

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