Harriman Glacier, Prince William Sound

Harriman Glacier, Prince William Sound

by | Jan 4, 2023

Harriman Glacier is 8 miles (13 km) long, and trends northeast to its terminus at the head of Harriman Fjord, in Prince William Sound, about 74 miles (119 km) west-southwest of Valdez and 16 miles (26 km) northeast of Whittier, Alaska. It was named by members of the 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition after the expedition sponsor Edward H. Harriman.

Edward Harriman was a wealthy railroad magnate who organized a maritime expedition to Alaska in 1899. Harriman brought with him an elite community of scientists, artists, photographers, and naturalists to explore and document the Alaskan coast. The Harriman Alaska expedition explored the coast of Alaska for two months, from Seattle to Siberia and back again.

The Harriman Glacier is one of nine named glaciers that flow into Harriman Fjord. The Harriman is the trunk glacier of Harriman Fjord and comes to the water’s edge at the southwest head of the bay. The terminus is at tidewater and the frontal ice cliff is estimated to be 300 feet (91 m) high. The glacier flows from an extensive icefield with several unnamed feeder glaciers, and with only a few peaks or nunataks not permanently snow-covered. Read more here and here. Explore more of Harriman Glacier here:

About the background graphic

This ‘warming stripe’ graphic is a visual representation of the change in global temperature from 1850 (top) to 2022 (bottom). Each stripe represents the average global temperature for one year. The average temperature from 1971-2000 is set as the boundary between blue and red. The color scale goes from -0.7°C to +0.7°C. The data are from the UK Met Office HadCRUT4.6 dataset. 

Credit: Professor Ed Hawkins (University of Reading). Click here for more information about the #warmingstripes.

Please report any errors here

error: Content is protected !!