iPolitics By iPolitics. Published on Apr 29, 2021 11:20am The Lead “Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen that glaciers have lost about 267 gigatonnes per year. So, if we take that amount of water and we divide it up across the island of Ireland, that’s enough to cover all of Ireland in 3m of water each year,” Robert McNabb, a member of the research team that conducted the study, told BBC News. Scientists have long warned that warming temperatures driven by climate change are impacting glaciers and ice sheets around the world, resulting in rising sea levels that threaten many of the the world’s coastal cities.