29/04/2021
James Renwick on The AM Show. Credits: Video - The AM Show; Image - Getty
One of New Zealand s top scientists says a new study highlighting the plight of the world s glaciers is sobering stuff and shows we have little time left to stop filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases.
Glaciers worldwide are now losing 298 billion tonnes of ice every year, the study published in
Nature found, up from 227 billion tonnes 20 years ago.
New Zealand glaciers are losing about 1.5m a year, shrinking seven times faster than they were in the early 2000s.
Some of them are hundreds of metres thick so you might think 1.5 metres doesn t sound like much, but that s on top of another 1.5m and another 1.5m, James Renwick, a climate scientist at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, told The AM Show on Thursday.