Climate Change Comes to the Grand Tetons

On the wall of my hotel room here at the Jackson Lake Lodge in Moran, Wyo., there is a framed photograph of the spectacular Teton Range taken during the 1950s.

In it, a handful of tourists in short-sleeve shirts admire the jagged, snow-capped peaks. While it is clearly summer in the picture, the mountains are blanketed in snow, with huge glaciers covering much of the granite.

Looking out my window at the same vista this morning, there is not a trace of fresh snowfall to be seen on the peaks forming one of America’s most beautiful mountain ranges. And the glaciers are markedly smaller than they were just 70 years ago.

The signs of a warming planet are everywhere here in Grand Teton National Park. With retreating glaciers, lakes depleted by drought and forests parched by hotter temperatures, climate change is upending one of the great intact ecosystems in North America.

It’s a story playing out around the country. After more than a century of trying to preserve some of the world’s most wondrous natural landscapes, the National Park Service in recent years has shifted its mission away from absolute conservation. It is now making tough decisions about which plants and animals to save, and which they may need to let go. In Washington State, the glaciers on Mount Rainier are melting. In Maine, ecologists are working to save vulnerable trees in Acadia National Park.

“These things are happening so quickly, and they’re being sped up by all the human activity,” said Kirk Ryder, a longtime nature guide in the area who showed me and my family around the park yesterday morning. “Fire activity is increasing, and heat is stressing the wildlife.”

Grand Teton National Park, which is just south of Yellowstone, remains a natural wonder. In just a few hours exploring the park, we saw a mother moose with twin calves, a huge herd of elk with three bulls sporting enormous sets of antlers, a herd of bison on the move, three pronghorns picking their way through a field of purple thistle, bald eagles, kingfishers, osprey, pelicans and more.

Yet as we drove along the base of the Tetons, the fingerprints of a warming world were impossible to miss.

Up on Mount Moran, a hulking slab of granite in the middle of the range, two of the Tetons’ best-known glaciers were exposed to the searing sun. The Falling Ice Glacier and the Skillet Glacier have both retreated significantly in recent decades. Between 1967 and 2006, at least 25 percent of the park’s glacier cover disappeared, according to a park official.

We passed Jackson Lake, which is dammed and serves as a water source for agriculture in Idaho. Ryder explained how a few years ago, waters in the lake reached historically low levels. A lighter than usual snowpack the year before, followed by a spring and a summer devoid of the usual rains, meant that farmers and ranchers sucked the lake dry, leaving boats stranded in mud in Colter Bay, a popular tourist destination.

Over the past 110 years or so, the average daytime high temperatures in the Tetons have not changed significantly. But the nighttime low temperatures have increased between 3 and 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

As a result of this nighttime warming trend, the National Park Service expects the Grand Teton to see seven to 14 fewer weeks of below-freezing temperatures by late this century.

“There’s an overall warming trend that’s substantial and that is projected to continue,” said Andrew Hansen, an ecology professor at Montana State University who has studied the effects of climate change on the greater Yellowstone region, which includes the Tetons. “There are big implications for snow pack. There’s less precipitation falling as snow versus rain, and more rapid melting, and both of those lead to increased aridity. There’s more drought, there’s more drought-stressed forest and vegetation, more drying of fuels and hence increased fire risk.”

While higher temperatures are changing the landscape, most mammals are so far proving resilient. Hansen explained that hoofed animals, known by the wonderful term “ungulates,” are adept at roaming widely to find food when the weather changes. The same is true for predators like wolves, coyotes and mountain lions.

But other animals in the area are already being decimated by climate change. Trout levels in the Snake River “have declined tremendously,” according to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. That’s the result of lower water flows, warmer waters, new diseases and recreational fishing. “It’s a crisis situation, and it’s climate-related,” Hansen said.

Looking ahead, the coming decades will be crucial in determining which trees, fish, birds, ungulates and other animals flourish in the Tetons and Yellowstone.

Research suggests that at current levels of warming, the region could see a significant loss of forested area by the end of the century. That would have cascading effects on other plant life, the rivers and animals large and small. There will almost certainly be more fires, which are burning hotter as the planet warms, making it harder for forests to bounce back. And as park officials work to rebound from disasters like the Yellowstone floods, they are planning for a hotter future with more extreme weather.

“On the one hand, the system is quite resilient,” Hansen said. But at a certain threshold, even the most adaptable plants and animals may no longer be able to cope. “The question,” he added, “is what level of climate change would lead to tipping points.”

4 things to know

Canada’s wildfires were a top global emitter in 2023, a new study found. The wildfires, which ravaged an area the size of Florida in the boreal forests last year, produced more planet-warming carbon emissions than the burning of fossil fuels in all but three countries. The numbers call into question how much carbon the forests will absorb in the future.

Zero-carbon sources supplied 41 percent of the world’s electricity last year, according to a report by BloomberNEF, a research firm. The report found that renewable energy sources like wind and solar made up 17 percent of total electricity generation, while hydroelectric and nuclear power accounted for 24 percent.

Extreme weather batters countries around the world. Typhoon Shanshan made landfall on Thursday morning in southern Japan, putting nearly a million people under evacuation orders. In Sudan, the collapse of a dam after heavy rains left at least 30 people dead and destroyed or damaged the homes of 50,000 people. Floods killed at least 28 people and displaced 24,000 in the Indian state of Gujarat, according to the BBC.

Namibia plans to kill more than 700 wild animals to feed its people, CNN reported. During the worst drought in a century, the country announced it would kill hundreds of elephants, zebras and hippos and distribute the meat to people struggling with food insecurity.

More climate news:

• Heatmap News summarizes new data from the Department of Energy, which finds that jobs in fields like renewable energy, nuclear and zero-emissions vehicles are growing quickly.

• The Washington Post examines the growing problem of heat-related illnesses at political rallies.

• In India, tracking the heat rather than rain patterns is becoming a better way of predicting food inflation, Bloomberg reports.

Correction: The Aug. 27 newsletter described incorrectly the origin of a newspaper advertisement that called on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to withdraw from the presidential race. While a number of Kennedy’s former colleagues at the Natural Resources Defense Council signed on to the ad, it was taken out by the NRDC Action Fund, the group’s political wing, not by the individuals themselves.