Haupapa / Tasman Glacier is the largest glacier in
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
, and one of several large
glacier
A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its Ablation#Glaciology, ablation over many years, often Century, centuries. It acquires dis ...
s which flow south and east towards the
Mackenzie Basin
The Mackenzie Basin (), popularly and traditionally known as the Mackenzie Country, is an elliptical intermontane basin located in the Mackenzie and Waitaki Districts, near the centre of the South Island of New Zealand. It is the largest suc ...
from the
Southern Alps
The Southern Alps (; officially Southern Alps / Kā Tiritiri o te Moana) is a mountain range extending along much of the length of New Zealand's South Island, reaching its greatest elevations near the range's western side. The name "Southern ...
in New Zealand's
South Island
The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman ...
.
Geography
At in length, Tasman Glacier is still New Zealand's longest glacier, despite shrinking considerably from the 1990s onwards.
It is as much as wide and thick, and lies entirely within the borders of
Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park
Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park is in the South Island of New Zealand. Aoraki / Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest mountain, and the eponymous village lie within the park. The area was gazetted as a national park in October 1953 and consists ...
. The glacier covers an area of and starts at a height of above sea level. Snowfall during the winter and spring seasons may accumulate up to . After the summer melt, may remain in the high altitude
glacier head
A glacier head is the top of a glacier. Although glaciers seem motionless to the observer they are in constant motion and the terminus is always either advancing or retreating.
On a glacier, the accumulation zone is the area above the firn line ...
.
The Tasman flows south west from Hochstetter Dome and Mount Elie De Beaumont alongside the southern slopes of
The Minarets
The Minarets are a series of jagged peaks located in the Ritter Range, a sub-range of the Sierra Nevada in the state of California. They are easily viewed from Minaret Summit, which is accessible by auto. Collectively, they form an arête, and a ...
and south along the eastern flank of New Zealand's two highest mountains,
Mount Tasman
Mount Tasman (''Horokoau'' in Māori) is New Zealand's second highest mountain, rising to a height of . It is located in the Southern Alps of the South Island, four kilometres to the north of its larger neighbour, Aoraki / Mount Cook. Unlike A ...
and its higher southern neighbour
Aoraki / Mount Cook
Aoraki / Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand. Its height, as of 2014, is listed as . It sits in the Southern Alps, the mountain range that runs the length of the South Island. A popular tourist destination, it is also a favourite ...
.
Although its upper reaches are snow-covered, rocks carried by the glacier are exposed by
ablation
Ablation ( la, ablatio – removal) is removal or destruction of something from an object by vaporization, chipping, erosion, erosive processes or by other means. Examples of ablative materials are described below, and include spacecraft materi ...
along its course, and the lower glacier is entirely rock-covered. The rock cover helps insulate the ice from the sunlight and slows down the melting process. Tributaries in the lower parts are the Rudolf Glacier, Forrest Ross Glacier, named after
Forrestina Ross), Kaufmann Glacier, Haast Glacier, Hochstetter Glacier, and Ball Glacier.
The glacial terminal lake is met by the meltwater of the
Murchison Glacier
The Murchison Glacier is an long glacier flowing through Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park in the South Island of New Zealand. Lying to the east of the Malte Brun range and west of the Liebig Range, high in the Southern Alps, it flows from the T ...
, which approaches from the northeast and flows alongside the Tasman Glacier outside the moraine wall. The waters of
Tasman Lake
Tasman Lake is a proglacial lake formed by the recent retreat of the Tasman Glacier in New Zealand's South Island.
In the early 1970s, there were several small meltwater ponds on the Tasman Glacier. By 1990, these ponds had merged into Tasman L ...
flow into the
Tasman River
The Tasman River is an alpine braided river flowing through Canterbury, in New Zealand's South Island.
The river's headwaters are in Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park, where it is the outflow of the proglacial Tasman Lake. It is also fed by the ...
and flow south joining the
Hooker River
The Hooker River is a river in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. It flows south from Hooker Lake, the glacier lake of Hooker Glacier, which lies on the southern slopes of Aoraki / Mount Cook. After 3 kilometers, it flows through Mueller Glacier ...
draining the proglacial lakes on the
Hooker and
Mueller Glacier
The Mueller Glacier is a long glacier flowing through Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park in the South Island of New Zealand. It lies to the west of Mount Cook Village within the Southern Alps, flowing roughly north-west from its névé near Mo ...
s. The Tasman River exhibits a
braided
Braided is a musical group consisting of Casey LeBlanc, Ashley Leitão, and Amber Fleury, who all competed on the third season of '' Canadian Idol'' in 2005. They are the third music group to come from an Idol show in the world, after Young Div ...
characteristic, and flows south into
Lake Pukaki
Lake Pukaki is the largest of three roughly parallel alpine lakes running north–south along the northern edge of the Mackenzie Basin on New Zealand's South Island. The others are Lakes Tekapo and Ohau. All three lakes were formed when the te ...
. They eventually flow into the
Waitaki River
The Waitaki River is a large braided river that drains the Mackenzie Basin and runs some south-east to enter the Pacific Ocean between Timaru and Oamaru on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It starts at the confluence of the ...
and to the Pacific Ocean north of
Oamaru
Oamaru (; mi, Te Oha-a-Maru) is the largest town in North Otago, in the South Island of New Zealand, it is the main town in the Waitaki District. It is south of Timaru and north of Dunedin on the Pacific coast; State Highway 1 and the railway ...
.
Recent retreat
The glacier remained at a constant in length for all of its recorded history in the 20th century before starting its current period of rapid melting in the 1990s.
Between 2000 and 2008 alone, the glacier terminus receded 3.7 km. Since the 1990s the terminus has retreated about a year on average. The glacier is now in a period of faster retreat where the rate of retreat is calculated to be between each year. It is estimated that the Tasman Glacier will eventually disappear and the terminal
Tasman Lake
Tasman Lake is a proglacial lake formed by the recent retreat of the Tasman Glacier in New Zealand's South Island.
In the early 1970s, there were several small meltwater ponds on the Tasman Glacier. By 1990, these ponds had merged into Tasman L ...
will reach a maximum size in 10 to 19 years time. In 1973 Tasman Glacier had no terminal lake and by 2008 Tasman Lake was long, wide, and deep.
A large
calving event was possibly triggered, or at least contributed to, by the
2011 Christchurch earthquake
A major earthquake occurred in Christchurch on Tuesday 22 February 2011 at 12:51 p.m. local time (23:51 UTC, 21 February). The () earthquake struck the entire of the Canterbury region in the South Island, centred south-east ...
on 22 February 2011. On this day 30 to 40 million metric tons (33 to 44 million short tons)
[ of ice dropped from the terminal face of the Tasman Glacier and fell into the Tasman Lake. Boats were hit with ]tsunami
A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explo ...
waves of up to as the ice fell into the Tasman Lake under the glacier. Similar events in the past have been attributed to buoyancy effects, a result of high basal water pressures and increased lake level following heavy rainfall events.
Access and tourism
Tasman Glacier has a long history of tourism, with heli skiing tours offered on the upper glacier since the early 1970s. The tributary Ball Glacier was also popular for skiing, with national championships being held there in the 1930s. It has since diminished too far to be safely accessed. Similarly, Tasman Glacier's significant ice loss over the past decades has impacted tourism,[ with an increasing number of crevasses being exposed and not filled in by snow any more, requiring guided tours to avoid these areas, and restricting the heli skiing season to July, August and September.][
The proglacial Tasman Lake is a popular destination for boat tours among the icebergs often floating in the lake. Boats are not allowed closer than to the tall terminal face of Tasman Glacier for safety reasons.
The Ball Shelter Track, part of the Ball Hut Route, leads along the western side of the glacier, separated from Tasman Lake by a tall moraine wall until about 6 kilometres in, where it climbs high enough for the view to open up. At that point, the rock-covered lower Tasman Glacier in the valley between the moraine walls is wide.]
See also
* Glaciers of New Zealand
New Zealand contains many glaciers, mostly located near the Main Divide of the Southern Alps in the South Island. They are classed as mid-latitude mountain glaciers. There are eight small glaciers in the North Island on Mount Ruapehu.
An inv ...
* List of glaciers
A glacier ( ) or () is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight; it forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation (melting and sublimation) over many years, often centuries. Glaciers slowly deform ...
* Retreat of glaciers since 1850 – Oceania
References
Further reading
''Satellite Image Atlas of Glaciers of the World, Glaciers of New Zealand''
Chinn, T.H., USGS Professional Paper 1386, 1988.
External links
{{Commons category, Tasman Glacier
Department of Conservation
– Tasman Valley walking tracks
Landforms of Canterbury, New Zealand
Glaciers of New Zealand
Southern Alps