Glaciers shrinking at unprecedented rate
Print Edition
GLACIERS worldwide have shrunk to levels not seen in 120 years of record-keeping, with melt-off accelerating in the first decade of the 21st century, according to a study released yesterday.
On average, glaciers currently lose between 50 and 150 centimeters of thickness every year, the study, published in the Journal of Glaciology, reported.
“This is two to three times more than the corresponding average of the 20th century,” said Michael Zemp, director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service and the study’s lead author.
More than a billion people, especially in Asia and South America, get more than half of their drinking water from the seasonal melting of snow and glacier ice, research has shown.
The current rate of global glacier melt is without precedent for the 120 years covered by scientific observation, and probably for much longer, Zemp added.
Moreover, accelerated ice loss has created a dynamic whereby glaciers in many regions will continue to diminish even if global warming did not continue to boost global temperatures.
Preliminary data from the past five years, not covered in the study, suggest that rapid decline of ice mass is continuing apace.
The 20th-century record ice loss observed in 1998 “has been exceeded in 2003, 2006, 2011, 2013, and probably again in 2014,” Kemp said.
The long-term trend of glacier retreat takes into account shorter periods where glaciers regained some of their lost ice mass.
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