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If you don’t hovering over a glacier, you’d rather launch soon. The world’s high mountain glaciers are melting faster than scientists think; Since 2015, nearly 300 billion tons of ice have been lost each year. If this rate of melting continues, many could disappear completely by the middle of the century, according to a new study conducted today.
Researchers from Canada, France, Switzerland and Norway collected 20-year-old satellite imagery on a NASA satellite taken from a special camera Earth. It’s called a device ASTERFor the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, it captured images of more than 210,000 glaciers around the world, each photographed with two separate lenses, creating three-dimensional views of their surface features. The study ruled out massive layers of ice covering Greenland and Antarctica, which are being studied by other groups of scientists.
New analysis, published today magazine Nature, found that between 2000 and 2004 glaciers lost 227 billion tons of ice a year. But between 2015 and 2019, that rate rose to 298 billion tons annually, a change attributed to warmer temperatures and increased rainfall by the study’s authors. Taken together, the number of water years flowing down rivers and into the oceans accounts for one-fifth of the sea level rise in the last 20 years.
The problem is not only the rise in sea level, although this is a major problem, it endangers the well-being of its inhabitants coastal nations like Indonesia, Bangladesh, Panama, the Netherlands, and some parts of United States. In some inland regions, millions of people are dependent on snow water for clean water; in years when there is not much snow, glaciers provide a protective source of water. This is especially true in some parts of the Andes, the Himalayas, and Alaska. “Many systems on the planet provide fresh and abundant water,” he says Brian Menounos, Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of North British Columbia and author of new research. “After these glaciers disappear, you don’t have that buffer capability.”
Menounos says previous research on glacier melting has made fewer measurements in both space and time, creating a blur to know how many glaciers were shrinking. Using an accurate satellite image, he says, “We showed that we reduced the uncertainty a lot through our calculations.” To reduce the total number of 211,000 glaciers, a supercomputer from the University of Northern Columbia in Britain was needed to operate for almost a full year.
He says the new study provides a harsh warning for the future Jonathan Bamber, A professor of geographical sciences at the University of Bristol, who did not take part in the research. “This is the most comprehensive, accurate and concise assessment of global glacier mass loss ever,” he wrote in an email to WIRED. “The level of detail in the results allows us to see changes in individual glaciers around the world for the first time.”
Bamber says the analysis shows that if the trend continues, some low-altitude mountain regions will completely lose their glaciers by 2050. “While the results and work are impressive, the message in the headline is pretty bleak,” Bamber continued. “Glaciers are on the way, with a significant impact on water resources, natural hazards, rising sea levels, tourism and local livelihoods.”
The authors of the study agree with this assessment, and Menounos said that for several centuries, such as Cascades and Montana Glacier National Park, there will be no ice in the middle of the century. “Watch as long as you can,” he asks.
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