A vast glacier-fed river which flowed from Canada’s Yukon territory across Alaska to drain into the Bering Sea has disappeared in just four days, in what scientists believe is the first observed case of “river piracy”.
High average temperatures in the first three months of 2016 caused a dramatic spike in the amount of meltwater flowing from the Kaskawulsh glacier, carving a deep canyon in the ice and redirecting the flow toward the Alsek River in the south, rather than the north-flowing Slims River.
That changed the Slims River from a three-metre-deep, raging torrent to a place where “massive afternoon dust storms occurred almost daily”, according to a scientific paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
“We were really surprised when we got there and there was basically no water in the river,” lead author Daniel Shugar said of the Slims River.
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