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A Glacial Vanishing Act
BROOKLIN, Canada- Glaciers, the world's freshwater towers, continue their record-breaking meltdown, a new U.N. report shows.
The average rate of thinning and melting more than doubled between 2004 and 2006, reports the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS), a centre based at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
"The latest figures are part of what appears to be an accelerating trend with no apparent end in sight," said Wilfried Haeberli, director of the WGMS.
The accelerated glacier meltdown is a clear indicator that climate change has taken hold and millions if not billions will be affected, warned Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).
Glaciers feed the rivers that people are completely dependent on -- 360 million on the Ganges in India and 388 million on the Yangtze in China alone. Reduced water or irregular water flows will make it more difficult to grow crops in these regions and other parts of the world. Rapidly melting glaciers also produce floods and raise sea levels. On average, there is one metre water of fresh water in every 1.1 metres of glacier ice.
The Service has been tracking the fate of glaciers for over a century. Continuous data series of annual mass balance, expressed as thickness change, are available for 30 reference glaciers since 1980. The ice loss in 2006 was particularly high, nearly triple that of 2005. Overall since 1980, glaciers have experienced an average net loss of 11.5 metres in ice thickness. Such losses are clearly visible in many parts of the world.
Some of the most dramatic shrinking has taken place in Europe, with Norway's Breidalblikkbrea glacier thinning by close to 3.1 metres during 2006 alone. Recent studies indicate that most of the South American glaciers from Colombia to Chile and Argentina are drastically reducing their volume at an accelerated rate.
Nearly all glaciers in the U.S. are also in decline, says William Bidlake, a glacier expert with the U.S. Geological Survey in Washington State.
"There's been an overall decline since the 1950s," Bidlake told IPS.
As temperatures rise, glaciers retreat up the mountain to higher and cooler elevations. "Were seeing new real estate that hasn't seen the light of day for thousands of years," he said.
The mountain snowpack is more important for water flows in the U.S. but in drought years, it is the glaciers that keep water in many rivers during the hot summer months. As glaciers shrink, they have less water to supply those rivers.
This year's cold winter in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere will do little to halt the glacier vanishing act, said Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Penn State University in the U.S.
"Glaciers don't melt in the winter," Alley said in an interview.
The colder and snowier than usual weather has led some to suggest that the rate of climate change is slowing. But even if a few months are cooler or this year is cooler overall than last, the trend over the past 30 years makes it absolutely clear that temperatures are climbing, he said.
Glaciers will continue to melt. Continuing losses on the massive Greenland ice sheet has the potential to raise sea levels seven metres, Alley said.
Everyone should sit and take notice of the see-it-with-your-own eyes glacial meltdown, said Steiner in a statement.
However, an important meeting between the world's top 20 emitters of greenhouse gases ended in acrimony Sunday in Japan. Once again, developed nations failed to find agreement with developing nations on how to curb emissions. These so-called G20 countries that include leading industrialised nations plus large developing countries such as China, India, Brazil and Indonesia are responsible for about 80 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.
There is but 18 months until the 2009 U.N. Climate Convention meeting in Copenhagen, where governments must agree on a decisive new emissions reduction treaty. Most scientists around the world say this treaty must result in the reduction of emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020 to have a chance to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Without that international agreement in 2009, "like the glaciers, our room for manoeuvre and the opportunity to act may simply melt away," said Steiner.
© 2008 Inter Press Service
13 Comments so far
Show AllOk, cool, But what do you think we should do about it, we are techinically in an Ice Age. It was going to happen anyway, the Earth is just getting old. But i am glad that it is being addressed by the nations.
So when will the US gov. quit using our tax dollars to subsidize insurance for the assholes that continue to build on the coasts ?
The planet is sick and its immune system is kicking in to rid itself of the pathogen. I fear that in ten years the world will be unrecognizble and hold far far fewer people.
We're on our way to becoming Mars.
Between 900 and 1350AD this earth was very warm indeed and the human race had nothing to do with it. During that period, Greenland was permanently inhabited with its citizens surviving on farming and fishing. Things returned to "normal" from 1350 to 1500 and then came a period called the "little ice age" from 1500 to about 1850. During this period, the Thames River in England froze over, as did New York harbour. The Polar bears survived both episodes. The populations of both Iceland and Norway dropped drastically during the cold period.
The only constant as far as warming variations are concerned is the sun and its thermal affect which functions within certain parameters. The industrial age was well underway in 1850 but it's a stretch to claim we are responsible for all the heat. The 900AD heat period and the "little ice age" cannot in anyway be explained because of human activity, and neither can the present warming trend.
The so-called scientific data presently quoted by the many is fine, but the "stretched conclusions" are certainly not valid and/or scientific. Those "expanded assumptions" are the realm of belief, and that is the domain of religion.
Glaciers might not melt in winter, but if enough snow doesn't fall to replace what melts in the rest of the year; said glacier will go away. So, where is the rain/snow falling? Unfortunately it's not falling on the glaciers... It's not likely that we'll end up as Mars, that planet is nearly as small as our Moon and just barely has the gravity to hold an atmosphere. We're not close enough to the Sun to become another Venus; a lovely little world where sulfuric acid falls as rain on a surface that's hotter than boiling lead. With luck, we'll survive - some of us anyhow - but not with the numbers nor the level of comforts to which most North Americans are used to.
S17TR5,
Here's a recent paper by James Hansen explaining the latest evidence, would you care to read it and comment?
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080317.pdf
Other very interesting papers and presentations:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/
~S17TR5~. Portions of Greenland was and has been permanently inhabited long before 900 AD by native indians. The Norsemen inhabited that land mass after 900 AD and the Danes have had coastal and some inland villages there ever since that time. __ So what?
That has nothing whatsoever to do with what has transpired in our atmosphere since the industrial age began some 200 years ago, when we humans began burning fossil fuels in ernest. The thousands of ice core samples taken from our polar regions, prove beyond any sensible, or reasonable queston, that humanity is responsible for the current global warming, which results in melting glaciers world-wide, among other serious problems.
'Google' (Arctic Methane Gas) and read the thousand or so articles on the subject. The perma-frost is thawing in the Arctic region of Earth and when the billions of tons of methatne gas, which has been trapped there for over 50,000 years excapes into our atomoshere, our ass will be grass and Mother Nature will be the grim reaper.
That's not my personal opinion BTW, if you disagree, argue with the highly qualifed scientists and geologists who are warning us that it's a fact.
And ~PoliSci~. "We are technically in an ice age." ___Indeed we are.__ That's why the melting glaciers should be a cause for concern.___By everyone.
Gaia is pissed; she's hitting back.
" PoliSci March 18th, 2008 1:05 pm
Ok, cool, But what do you think we should do about it, we are techinically in an Ice Age. It was going to happen anyway, the Earth is just getting old."
YOU, WE, ANIMALS, PLANTS, WE GET OLD, BUT NOT REALLY THE EARTH AND COSMOS, which remain young and dynamic; if only we weren't destroying our part of the universe, that is, this planet. Material has half-life, but we do NOT know that this applies to the universe and likely or surely have no way of determining whether it applies or not.
Anyway, I never consider the Earth and universe as old, except in relative terms; given our relatively momentary lifespans.
Portions of Greenland were inhabited..
Maybe not.. And not for very long This was part of Eric the Reds plan to get Vikings to settle O/S.. If you look into this there is no real clear evidence that they were actually living in Greenland. Eric apparently indulged in a little expansive thinking.. The actual site of Viking Grape growing was Newfoundland I believe..
But so what??
The problem is with us.. It has probably been caused by the actions of man over the last 100 years yet is only now, in last 5 - 10 years showing up. The Buffers are full, the system is changing its equilibrium and direction and there is little we will or probably can do to stop it.
The BEST we can do is plan to ameliorate the worst effects of these changes upon human society, learn our lesson and hope that Gaia gives us another chance..
(One thing we can do is not get sucked into arguments with blog trolls over freezing rivers and Greenland.) Greenhouse gases provide a heat-trapping effect. Heat melts ice, reducing albedo, which reduces cooling, and so forth. If you don't think the greenhouse effect matters, take a look at the planet Venus. The effect is no longer debatable. Let's not waste any more time with the "Sunspot" crowd.
We have to reduce our carbon emissions.
We are technically in an ice age due to the position of Earth's orbit around the sun. But in spite of that, we are experiencing global warming because of the greenhouse effect in our atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. If we don't stop it, we are all gonna die when the Arctic methane "burps" out within as few as three years. We may have twenty or more years and if so we'd better take some drastic action now.