AP Top News Canada glacier melt rerouted in rare case of 'river piracy

WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists have witnessed the first modern case of what they call "river piracy" and they blame global warming. Most of the water gushing from a large glacier in northwest Canada last year suddenly switched from one river to another.

That changed the Slims River from a 10-foot (3 meters) deep, raging river to something so shallow that it barely was above a scientist's high top sneakers at midstream. The melt from the Yukon's Kaskawulsh glacier now flows mostly into the Alsek River and ends up in the Pacific Ocean instead of the Arctic's Bering Sea.

It seemed to all happen in about one day — last May 26 — based on river gauge data, said Dan Shugar, a University of Washington Tacoma professor who studies how land changes. A 100-foot (30-meter) tall canyon formed at the end of the glacier, rerouting the melting water, Shugar and his colleagues wrote in a study published in Monday's journal Nature Geoscience .
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