EVENTYRISEN, Norway — Glaciers in Norway have started to creep down from their mountain strongholds--growing bigger in apparent defiance of global warming.
One wall of ice, reclaiming ground uncovered for years, is slowly splintering its way through a forest.
"This glacier is about 30 yards longer than it was last year," said Bjoern Andreas Ovesen, a guide on Eventyrisen, a glacier in southern Norway where huge chunks of ice are crawling down a barren valley.
The glaciers are growing in size because more snow is falling on them and turning into ice, scientists say.
Climatologists say pollution is driving up world temperatures, threatening to melt glaciers and the polar ice. This could raise the level of the oceans and flood low-lying coastal areas, they predict.
But Prof. Olav Orheim, head of the Antarctic section at the Norwegian Polar Reseach Institute in Oslo, said theories of the so-called "greenhouse effect" had largely missed the side effects of higher temperatures--such as more snow.
"In western Norway, all small glaciers, which respond most quickly to climate changes, are now advancing," Orheim said.
Global warming means not only that more ice melts in the summer, but also that more moisture is sucked up from the oceans and falls as rain or snow. Some parts of Norway have had record summer temperatures--and record snowfalls.
Norway's western glaciers are among the best monitored in the world. They have generally tended to shrink since the 18th Century but have begun to grow again in the last year or two.
More snow dumped on glaciers could slow a current rise in sea levels of between one and two milimeters--four-hundreths to eight-hundredths of an inch--a year. But Orheim predicted that it is unlikely to go so far as to reverse the trend.
Visitors to the Eventyrisen Glacier--roped together for safety in case one slips into a crevasse--hear muffled thuds and growls as the ice grinds downhill, moving on average about 3 inches a day.
Eventyrisen, which means "fairy ice," is named after the weird shapes--towers, bridges and pyramids--formed by chunks of ice as the glacier crumples into a narrowing valley at an elevation of about 5,600 feet.
Visitors stare down deep, blue crevasses, while a pinkish algae grows on the surface. Dust blown onto the glacier every summer leaves dark lines sandwiched between the layers of ice built up in the winters.
