Satellite images show the world’s glaciers are melting faster than ever, with more than half the melt coming from the U.S. and Canada, according to a new study.
Seth Borenstein
Glaciers are melting faster, losing 31% more snow and ice per year than they did 15 years earlier, according to three-dimensional satellite measurements of all the world’s mountain glaciers.
Scientists blame human-caused climate change.
Using 20 years of recently declassified satellite data, scientists calculated that the world’s 220,000 mountain glaciers are losing more than 328 billion tons (298 billion metric tons) of ice and snow per year since 2015, according to a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature. That’s enough melt flowing into the world’s rising oceans to put Switzerland under almost 24 feet (7.2 meters) of water each year.
The annual melt rate from 2015 to 2019 is 78 billion more tons (71 billion metric tons) a year than it was from 2000 to 2004. Global thinning rates, different than volume of water lost, doubled in the last 20 years and “that’s enormous,” said Romain Hugonnet, a glaciologist at ETH Zurich and the University of Toulouse
Associated Press
According to a study released Wednesday in the journal Nature, the world s 220,000 glaciers are melting faster now than in the 2000s. The Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska, has lost 2.8 billion tons of snow and ice since 2000. Previous Next
Thursday, April 29, 2021 1:00 am
Satellites find glacial melting acceleration
SETH BORENSTEIN | Associated Press
Glaciers are melting faster, losing 31% more snow and ice per year than they did 15 years earlier, according to three-dimensional satellite measurements of all the world s mountain glaciers.
Scientists blame human-caused climate change.
Using 20 years of recently declassified satellite data, scientists calculated that the world s 220,000 mountain glaciers are losing more than 328 billion tons of ice and snow per year since 2015, according to a study in Wednesday s journal Nature.
April 29, 2021 10:26 am
BY SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer
Glaciers are melting faster, losing 31% more snow and ice per year than they did 15 years earlier, according to three-dimensional satellite measurements of all the world’s mountain glaciers.
Scientists blame human-caused climate change.
Using 20 years of recently declassified satellite data, scientists calculated that the world’s 220,000 mountain glaciers are losing more than 328 billion tons (298 billion metric tons) of ice and snow per year since 2015, according to a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature. That’s enough melt flowing into the world’s rising oceans to put Switzerland under almost 24 feet (7.2 meters) of water each year.