The Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska is pictured here in February 2021. The glacier is one of many worldwide which are retreating. (Becky Bohrer/AP/via The Canadian Press)
Glacier mass is decreasing worldwide with an average total loss of 267 billion tonnes of mass per year, says a new study.
The period looked at was between 2000 and 2019. The loss of glacier mass during this period also accounted for 21 per cent of the observed sea-level rise, the authors said.
The study, “Accelerated global glacier mass loss in the early twenty-first century” was published in the journal
Nature on Wednesday.
Glacier mass loss has been accelerating by about 50 billion tonnes annually each decade since 2000, the study found.
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Global glacier retreat has accelerated
An international research team including scientists from ETH Zurich has shown that almost all the world’s glaciers are becoming thinner and losing mass’ and that these changes are picking up pace. The team’s analysis is the most comprehensive and accurate of its kind to date.
Rapid glacier melt: A roaring meltwater stream connects the Morteratsch and Pers Glaciers (r.), Engadine, Switzerland. A few years ago, the glaciers were connected by ice. (Photograph: P. Rüegg / ETH Zurich)
Glaciers are a sensitive indicator of climate change – and one that can be easily observed. Regardless of altitude or latitude, glaciers have been melting at a high rate since the mid-20th century. Until now, however, the full extent of ice loss has only been partially measured and understood. Now an international research team led by ETH Zurich and the University of Toulouse has authored a comprehensive study on global glacier retreat, which was
Bob Weber
In this Aug. 15, 2019, photo, a boat navigates at night next to large icebergs in eastern Greenland. Greenland s ice has been melting for more than 20 years. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Felipe Dana April 28, 2021 - 2:13 PM
A new study has used millions of satellite images to generate the clearest picture yet of the world s glaciers and concludes they re getting smaller, faster.
And glaciers along the western edge of North America are thinning faster than almost anywhere else in the world, said co-author Brian Menounos of the University of Northern British Columbia, whose paper was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. I don t think humans need more evidence the climate is changing, Menounos said.
“Processing spaceborne digital imagery to measure changes in surface elevation requires enormous computation power,” said UNBC professor and Hakai affiliate Dr. Brian Menounos, the Canada Research Chair in Glacier Change. “We needed an equivalent of about 584 modern computers running for about a year to derive these elevation models. Looked at another way, the generation of the elevation models required over five million compute hours.” The computations are part of a paper published in the April 29 issue of Nature that found that between 2000 and 2004, glaciers lost 227 gigatonnes of ice per year, but between 2015 and 2019, this rate increased to 298 gigatonnes per year. A gigatonne is equivalent to one billion tonnes. Loss of water from glaciers represents about 21 percent of the observed rise in sea levels over the last 20 years – some 0.74 millimetres a year.