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This archival photo from September 22, 2018 shows the Baishui Glacier No. 1 on the snow-capped Jade Dragon Mountain in China's southern Yunnan Province. Scientists say it is one of the world's fastest melting glaciers due to climate change and its relative proximity to the equator. It has lost 60% of its mass and shrunk by 250 meters since 1982. (AP Photo / Sam McNeil)
WASHINGTON (AP) – Terrestrial glaciers are melting much faster than scientists thought. A new study shows that they are losing 369 billion tons of snow and ice each year, more than half of that in North America.
The most comprehensive measurement of glaciers in the world has revealed that thousands of inland ice masses compressed to ice are shrinking 18% faster than an international panel of scientists calculated in 2013 .
The glaciers of the world are shrinking five times faster than in the 1960s. The study found that their melting accelerates due to global warming and adds water to the seas already in rise.
"In the space of 30 years, almost all regions have suddenly begun to lose mass at the same time," said lead author Michael Zemp, director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service of the United States. University of Zurich. "It's clearly climate change if you look at the global situation."
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The fastest growing glaciers are found in Central Europe, the Caucasus region, western Canada, the lower 48 states, New Zealand and the tropics. Glaciers in these regions lose on average more than 1% of their mass each year, according to a study published Monday by the journal Nature.
"In these regions, at the current rate of glacier loss, glaciers will not survive the last century," Zemp said.
The Zemp team used ground and satellite measurements to examine 19,000 glaciers, far more than previous studies. They determined that Southwest Asia is the only region of the 19 where glaciers do not shrink, which, according to Zemp, is due to local weather conditions.
According to the study, since 1961, the world has lost 10.6 billion tons of ice and snow (9.6 billion tons). Fade is enough to cover the 48 lowest American states in about 4 feet of water.
Scientists have known for a long time that global warming caused by human activities such as the burning of coal, gasoline and diesel for electricity and transportation causes the loss of Earth's ice. They are particularly concerned about the large ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica.
This study "tells us that there is much more in history," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, which was not doing so. part of the study. "The influence of glaciers on the sea level is greater than we thought."
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A number of factors are driving up the sea level. The main cause is that the oceans are warming up, causing the water to dilate. The new figures show that melting glaciers is a larger contributor than expected, responsible for about 25% to 30% of the annual rise in oceans, Zemp said.
The rising seas threaten coastal cities around the world and expose more people to the risk of flooding during storms.
Glaciers develop in the winter and shrink in the summer, but as the Earth warms, they grow less and shrink further. According to Zemp, summer warming is the main reason why glaciers shrink faster.
While people perceive glaciers as polar issues, reducing mountain glaciers closer to the equator can cause serious problems to people who depend on them, said Twila Moon, a snow data center scientist. and ice, which was also not part of the study. She added that the inhabitants of the Andes, for example, count each summer on the glaciers to drink drinking water and for irrigation.
A separate study Monday in Environmental Research Letters confirmed a faster merger and other changes in the Arctic. The study found that in winter, the Arctic is warming 2.8 times faster than the rest of the northern hemisphere. Overall, the area becomes wetter, cloudier and wetter.
"It's about steroids, it's hyperactive," said lead author Jason Box, a scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute.
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