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Ice melt across the planet is accelerating at a record rate, with the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps accelerating the fastest, research shows.
The rate of loss is now in line with the worst-case scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading climate authority, according to an article published Monday in The Cryosphere.
Thomas Slater, lead author and researcher at the University of Leeds’ Center for Polar Observation and Modeling, warned the consequences would be felt around the world. “Rising sea levels on this scale will have very serious impacts on coastal communities during this century,” he said.
About 28 tonnes of ice were lost between 1994 and 2017, which the article’s authors said would be enough to put a 100-meter-thick ice sheet across the UK. About two-thirds of the ice loss was caused by warming of the atmosphere, and about one-third by warming seas.
During the period studied, the rate of ice loss accelerated by 65%, according to the document, from 0.8 tonnes per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tonnes per year in 2017. About half of all lost ice came from land, which directly contributes to the overall sea level rise. Ice loss during the study period, 1994 to 2017, is estimated to have increased the sea level of 35 millimeters.
The greatest amounts of ice have been lost to floating ice in the polar regions, increasing the risk of a feedback mechanism known as albedo loss. White ice reflects solar radiation back into space – the albedo effect – but when floating sea ice melts, it discovers dark water which absorbs more heat, further accelerating warming in a feedback loop.
Glaciers posted the second largest loss of ice volume, with more than 6 tonnes of tonnes lost between 1994 and 2017, about a quarter of the global ice loss during the period. Shrinking glaciers threaten to cause both flooding and water shortages in some areas, because as large volumes melt they can submerge downstream areas, so shrunken glaciers produce less water flow. regular necessary for agriculture.
Inès Otosaka, co-author of the report and doctoral researcher at the Center for Polar Observation and Modeling, University of Leeds, said: “In addition to contributing to the average rise in sea level, glaciers in mountain are also essential as a freshwater resource for local communities. The receding glaciers around the world are therefore of crucial importance, both locally and globally.
The study, titled Earth’s Ice Imbalance, used satellite observations over a 23-year period to assess ice around the world. Previous studies have looked at parts of the world rather than doing a full data assessment. The research team included the University of Edinburgh, University College London and Earthwave, a data science organization, and was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council.
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