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glaciers
Researchers Warn of Imminent 'Death Spiral' for Rapidly Melting Alaska Ice Field
The Juneau ice field is melting at a rate of 50,000 gallons per second and is possibly heading "beyond a dynamic tipping point," a new study says.
Jul 02, 2024
The melting of Alaska's Juneau ice field—which contains more than 1,000 glaciers—is accelerating and could reach a tipping point much sooner than predicted, according to research published Tuesday.
The study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that ice loss from the Juneau ice field began accelerating rapidly after 2005.
The paper's authors found that "rates of area shrinkage were five times faster from 2015-2019 than from 1979-1990," while glacier volume loss—which had remained relatively consistent from 1770-1979—doubled after 2010.
"Forty years from now, what is it going to look like? I do think by then the Juneau ice field will be past the tipping point."
"Thinning has become pervasive across the icefield plateau since 2005, accompanied by glacier recession and fragmentation," the study states. "As glacier thinning on the plateau continues, a mass balance-elevation feedback is likely to inhibit future glacier regrowth, potentially pushing glaciers beyond a dynamic tipping point."
Study lead author Bethan Davies, a glaciologist at Newcastle University in England, said in a statement, "It's incredibly worrying that our research found a rapid acceleration since the early 21st century in the rate of glacier loss across the Juneau ice field."
"Alaskan icefields—which are predominantly flat, plateau icefields—are particularly vulnerable to accelerated melt as the climate warms since ice loss happens across the whole surface, meaning a much greater area is affected," Davies continued. "Additionally, flatter ice caps and icefields cannot retreat to higher elevations and find a new equilibrium."
"As glacier thinning on the Juneau plateau continues and ice retreats to lower levels and warmer air, the feedback processes this sets in motion is likely to prevent future glacier regrowth, potentially pushing glaciers beyond a tipping point into irreversible recession," she added.
Study co-author Mauri Pelto, a professor of environmental science at Nichols College in Massachusetts, toldThe Associated Press that the Juneau ice field is melting at a rate of about 50,000 gallons per second.
"When you go there the changes from year to year are so dramatic that it just hits you over the head," Pelto said. "In 1981, it wasn't too hard to get on and off the glaciers. You just hike up and you could you could ski to the bottom or hike right off the end of these glaciers. But now they've got lakes on the edges from melted snow and crevasses opening up that makes it difficult to ski."
As the AP reported:
Only four Juneau ice field glaciers melted out of existence between 1948 and 2005. But 64 of them disappeared between 2005 and 2019, the study said. Many of the glaciers were too small to name, but one larger one, Antler glacier, "is totally gone," Pelto said.
Alaska climatologist Brian Brettschneider, who was not part of the study, said the acceleration is most concerning, warning of "a death spiral" for the thinning ice field.
Pelto said that "the tipping point is when that snow line goes above your entire ice field, ice sheet, ice glacier, whichever one."
"And so for the Juneau ice field, 2019, 2018, showed that you are not that far away from that tipping point," he added. "We're 40 years from when I first saw the glacier. And so, 40 years from now, what is it going to look like? I do think by then the Juneau ice field will be past the tipping point."
It's not just Alaska. Glaciers around the world—from Greenland to Switzerland to Africa and the Himalayas—are melting at an alarming rate. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization warned in 2022 that glaciers in one-third of the 50 UNESCO World Heritage sites where they are found are on pace to disappear by 2050—even if planet-heating emissions are curbed.
Another study published last year by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Alaska found that even if humanity manages to limit planetary heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial temperatures—the more ambitious goal of the Paris agreement—half of Earth's glaciers are expected to melt by the end of the century.
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'A Betrayal': Women Elders Rip Swiss Lawmakers' Rejection of Landmark Climate Ruling
"The declaration is an attempt to continue to prevent human rights climate protection for political reasons, rather than recognizing that climate change is a scientific reality that affects everyone," said Greenpeace Switzerland.
Jun 13, 2024
Swiss women elders who recently won a landmark climate case said that they feel betrayed by their federal lawmakers, who voted Wednesday to disregard the court ruling.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled in April that the Swiss government violated senior citizens' human rights by refusing to heed scientists' climate warnings and swiftly phase out fossil fuel production.
However, on Wednesday the National Council—Switzerland's lower legislative chamber—voted 111-72 to essentially ignore the court's decision, which some lawmakers condemned as judicial overreach. This followed a 31-11 vote by the Council of States, the upper legislative chamber, on a similar measure earlier this month.
"Climate and health are intrinsically linked; good health and a safe climate go hand in hand."
"We are appalled by this decision which feels like both a betrayal of older women but is also out of step with humankind's collective responsibility to tackle climate change for the benefits of vulnerable groups and the future of all humankind," said Pia Hollenstein, a retired nurse and member of KlimaSeniorinnen, the group of women ages 64 and older who sued their government for failing to take adequate action to stop the planet from heating 1.5°C, the more ambitious target of the Paris agreement.
"As a nurse, I have seen how climate and health are intrinsically linked; good health and a safe climate go hand in hand," she added.
Responding to Wednesday's vote, Greenpeace Switzerland said that "the declaration is an attempt to continue to prevent human rights climate protection for political reasons, rather than recognizing that climate change is a scientific reality that affects everyone."
Switzerland's Alpine climate is particularly vulnerable the effects of global heating, which is mainly caused by burning fossil fuels. Studies have shown that the country's glaciers—a key water source for millions of Europeans—could disappear by the end of the century if warming isn't curbed.
At least one lawmaker who voted to flout the ECtHR ruling attacked KlimaSeniorinnen members. Jean-Luc Addor of the right-wing Swiss People's Party dismissed the activists as "just a bunch of... 'boomeuses',"—or female Baby Boomers—"who are trying to deny our children the living conditions they have enjoyed all their lives."
However, Véronique Boillet, a member of the Swiss Human Rights Institute and a law professor at the University of Lausanne, said in a statement: "The binding nature of the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights is the heart of the European human rights system. It is the element that makes this system unique and a model worldwide."
"It is not for the Swiss Parliament to decide when a judgment has been implemented and when further measures are necessary," she continued. "It is normal that courts set certain objectives, as the ECtHR did for Swiss politics. It is also a sign of a functioning system of checks and balances."
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'Sirens Are Blaring': WMO Says 2023 Shattered Key Climate Metrics
"Fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said.
Mar 19, 2024
Last year broke records for several key climate indicators, including surface temperatures, ocean heat, sea-level rise, and the loss of Antarctic sea ice, the World Meteorological Organization found in its State of the Global Climate 2023 report, released Tuesday.
The agency confirmed that 2023 was the hottest year on record and said it gave an "ominous" new meaning to the phrase "off the charts."
"Earth is issuing a distress call," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a video statement. "The latest State of the Global Climate report shows a planet on the brink. Fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts. Sirens are blaring across all major indicators."
"The climate crisis is THE defining challenge that humanity faces and is closely intertwined with the inequality crisis."
2023 saw an average global near-surface temperature of 1.45°C, the report found, making 2023 the hottest on record and the cap on the warmest 10-year period on record.
"Never have we been so close—albeit on a temporary basis at the moment—to the 1.5°C lower limit of the Paris agreement on climate change," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement. "The WMO community is sounding the red alert to the world."
The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service and European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts had found separately that January 2024 capped a 12-month period that exceeded the 1.5°C target for the first time.
2023 was also a particularly alarming year for ocean heat, with nearly a third of the ocean in the midst of a marine heatwave at any time during the year. Global sea-surface temperatures reached record heights for April and every month after, with July, August, and September especially hot. Ocean heat content also broke records, and more than 90% of the ocean experienced a heatwave for at least a portion of the year.
The world's glaciers and sea ice did not fare any better. Glaciers lost the most ice in any year since record-keeping began in 1950, and Antarctica's sea-ice extent at the end of winter smashed the previous record by 1 million square kilometers.
"Because of burning fossil fuels, which leads to CO2-induced global heating, we have impacted the polar regions to such a degree that 2023 saw by far the greatest loss of sea ice in the Antarctic and of land ice in Greenland," University of Exeter polar expert Martin Siegert told Common Dreams. "The world will feel the detrimental effects now and into the future because the changes observed will lead to 'feedback' processes encouraging further change."
"Our only response must be to stop burning fossil fuels so that the damage can be limited," Siegert added. "That is our best and only option."
2023 also saw record sea-level rise and ocean acidification.
"Climate change is about much more than temperatures," Saulo said. "What we witnessed in 2023, especially with the unprecedented ocean warmth, glacier retreat, and Antarctic sea ice loss, is cause for particular concern."
Records were broken too for the main cause of all this warming and melting—the levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide all reached record levels in 2022, and data indicates that the atmospheric concentrations of all three continued to rise in 2023, with carbon dioxide levels 50% higher than before the industrial revolution.
The report also considered the impacts of global heating on extreme weather events: 2023 saw several especially devastating climate-fueled disasters, including lethal flooding from Cyclone Daniel in Libya; Tropical Cyclone Mocha, which displaced 1.7 million people in the region around the Bay of Bengal; an extreme heatwave in southern Europe and North Africa; a record wildfire season in Canada that smothered several North American cities in heavy smoke; and the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than 100 years in Hawaii.
In addition to claiming lives and forcing people from their homes, these disasters have several other impacts on peoples' well-being. For example, the report noted that the number of people suffering from acute food insecurity had shot up to 333 million in 2023, more than two times the 149 million before the pandemic. While the root causes of this are war and conflict, economic downturns, and high food prices, extreme weather events can make the situation worse. When Cyclone Freddy, one of the longest-lasting cyclones ever, struck Madagascar, Mozambique, and Malawi in February, it flooded vast swaths of agricultural fields and damaged crops in other ways.
"The climate crisis is THE defining challenge that humanity faces and is closely intertwined with the inequality crisis—as witnessed by growing food insecurity and population displacement, and biodiversity loss," Saulo said.
Guterres, meanwhile, said the impact of extreme weather on sustainable development was "devastating."
"Every fraction of a degree of global heating impacts the future of life on Earth," he said.
There was some positive news in the report, mainly that renewable energy increased new capacity by nearly 50% in 2023 compared with 2022, the highest rate of increase in 20 years. Global climate finance nearly doubled from 2019-2020 to almost $1.3 trillion, but this was still only 1% of global gross domestic product.
To have a shot at limiting warming to 1.5°C, finance needs to increase by nearly $9 trillion by 2030 and another $10 trillion by 2050, but this is much lower than the estimated cost of doing nothing, which would be $1,266 trillion from 2025-2100, though the WMO said this was likely a "dramatic underestimate."
Guterres said it was still possible to limit long-term global temperature rise to 1.5°C, but it required swift action; leadership from the G20 nations toward a just energy transition; countries proposing 1.5°C-compliant climate plans by 2025; increased climate finance flows toward the developing world, including for adaptation and Loss and Damage; universal coverage by early warning systems by 2027; and "accelerating the inevitable end of the fossil fuel age."
"There's still time to throw out a lifeline to people and planet," Guterres said, "but leaders must step up and act now."
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