Declassified Satellite Images Show Glaciers Are Melting Fast

Declassified Satellite Images Show Glaciers Are Melting Faster Than Ever
Gizmodo
4/29/2021
Dharna Noor
© Photo: Johan Ordonez (Getty Images)
View of a glacier at sunset at Chiriguano Bay in South Shetland Islands, Antarctica on Nov. 7, 2019.
The world’s glaciers are melting faster and the climate crisis is to blame, a new study shows.
For a comprehensive new study, published in Nature on Wednesday, scientists analyzed half a million recently declassified 3D satellite images. The images span nearly two decades and 217,175 mountain glaciers, or nearly every single one on Earth. The imagery came from the Terra satellite, which NASA launched in 1999.
The authors calculated that these glaciers lost nearly 298 billion tons of mass on average per year since the start of the 21st century. And things are only getting worse: Since 2015, they’ve lost an average of more than 328 billion tons annually, a 31% increase compared to 15 years ago. This is the first-ever analysis to use 3D satellite imagery to analyze all of the world’s glaciers, not just those connected to ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctic. The imagery used was also extremely high resolution, which allowed the team to paint a clear picture and present their findings with a 95% confidence level.

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