Swiss glaciers melted at an above-average rate in 2024 as a blistering hot summer thawed through abundant snowfall, monitoring body GLAMOS said on Tuesday. Earlier this year, glaciologists had celebrated heavy winter and spring snow dumps in the Alps, hoping this would signal a halt to years of hefty declines or even a reversal of losses. A drone view of crevasses on Morteratsch Glacier amid climate change, in Pontresina, Switzerland, September 3, 2024. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse But with average August temperatures a few degrees above freezing even at the 3,571 meter high Jungfraujoch station perched above the Aletsch Glacier, scientists measured record ice losses across the country that month. Overall, GLAMOS said Swiss glaciers lost 2.5% of their volume this year which was abo...
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Recent glacier retreat across the Andes is unprecedented in the history of human civilization, according to a new study published in the Science journal on Thursday. The discovery shocked scientists, who initially planned to study the current state of glaciers and how they had varied throughout human civilization. FILE PHOTO: A view shows the Iver glacier close to the El Plomo mountain summit, in the Andes mountain range, in the Santiago Metropolitan Region, Chile, April 4, 2024. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado "We thought this result was decades away," said Andrew Gorin, lead author of the study, who first believed the initial results were a fluke, but were confirmed by later samples. "It goes to show you that this is happening faster than even those of us that think about this the mos...
Read MoreGlaciers in the Juneau Icefield in southeastern Alaska are melting at a faster rate than previously thought and may reach an irreversible tipping point sooner than expected, according to a study published on Tuesday. Home to more than 1,000 glaciers, the snow covered area is now shrinking 4.6 times faster than it was in the 1980s, according to a new study. Researchers at Newcastle University in England found that glacier loss in the icefield, located just north of Alaska's capital city of Juneau, has accelerated rapidly since 2010. Glacier melt is a major contributor to rising sea levels, a threat to coastal settlements worldwide. Current rates of ice melt could result in a permanent decline of Juneau Icefield, researchers said. People walk on a frozen Mendenhall Lake, with Mende...
Read MoreA top glacier watcher has warned that a warm early summer combined with a heat wave last week may have caused severe glacier melt in Switzerland, threatening to make 2023 its second-worst year for ice loss after a record thaw last year. Matthias Huss of the GLAMOS glacier monitoring center said full data won’t be in until late September and a precipitous drop in temperatures and high-altitude snowfall in recent days could help stem any more damage. But early signs based on readings from five sites and modeling results across Switzerland suggest considerable damage may already be done. “We can definitely say that we had very high melting in Switzerland and in Europe in general because the temperatures, they were extremely high for a long time — a more than one week heat wave,”...
Read More# Glacier loss was as much as 65% faster in 2010s compared with 2000s # 30% to 50% of glacial ice will be lost by 2100 at 1.5C of warming # Region expected to hit 'peak water' by mid-century, followed by shortages Glaciers in Asia’s Hindu Kush Himalaya could lose up to 75% of their volume by century’s end due to global warming, causing both dangerous flooding and water shortages for the 240 million people who live in the mountainous region, according to a new report. A team of international scientists has found that ice loss in the region, home to the famous peaks of Everest and K2, is speeding up. During the 2010s, the glaciers shed ice as much as 65% faster than they had in the preceding decade, according to the assessment by the Kathmandu-based International Centre for ...
Read MoreClimbers celebrate Everest 70th anniversary amid melting glaciers, rising temperatures
As the mountaineering community prepares to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the conquest of Mount Everest, there is growing concern about temperatures rising, glaciers and snow melting, and weather getting harsh and unpredictable on the world’s tallest mountain. Since the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) mountain peak was first scaled by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay in 1953, thousands of climbers have reached the peak and hundreds of lost their lives. A security person stands guard in front of a statue of Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary at the tourism board in Kathmandu, Nepal, Thursday, May 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha) The deteriorating conditions on Everest are raising concerns for the mountaineering community and the people whose live...
Read MoreResearchers caution that as a result of climate change causing glaciers to melt at an unparalleled pace, invertebrates inhabiting the chilly meltwater streams of the European Alps will encounter extensive loss of their natural habitats. Numerous species are expected to become constrained to frigid environments that will endure solely at higher elevations in the mountains, and these regions will also potentially experience stress from the ski and tourism sectors or from the creation of hydroelectric facilities. The investigation, co-headed by the University of Leeds and University of Essex, urges conservationists to contemplate novel measures for safeguarding aquatic biodiversity. Invertebrates - key role in ecosystems The invertebrate species, encompassing stoneflies, midg...
Read MoreStudy reveals 'invisible' glacier loss underwater A new study reveals that the mass loss of lake-terminating glaciers in the greater Himalaya has been significantly underestimated, due to the inability of satellites to see glacier changes occurring underwater, with critical implications for the region's future projections of glacier disappearance and water resources. Published in Nature Geoscience on April 3, the study was conducted by an international team including researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Graz University of Technology (Austria), the University of St. Andrews (UK), and Carnegie Mellon University (USA). FILE PHOTO: People walk past a destroyed dam after a Himalayan glacier broke and crashed into the dam at Raini Chak Lata village in Chamoli distric...
Read MoreChunks of ice float in milky blue waters. Clouds drift and hide imposing mountaintops. The closer you descend to the surface, the more the water roars — and the louder the “CRACK” of ice, as pieces fall from the arm of Europe’s largest glacier. The landscape is vast, elemental, seemingly far beyond human scale. The whole world, it seems, lies sprawled out before you. Against this outsized backdrop, the plane carrying the man who chases glaciers seems almost like a toy. Garrett Fisher, an American aviator and adventurer, looks out the window of his plane while on a mission to photograph glaciers in Norway, on July 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen) “No one’s there,” the man marvels. “The air is virtually empty.” This is Garrett Fisher’s playground — and, you quickly realize, his...
Read MoreExisting conservation efforts insufficient to protect Antarctic ecosystems Researchers have discovered a process that can contribute to the melting of ice shelves in the Antarctic. An international team of scientists found that adjacent ice shelves play a role in causing instability in others downstream. The study, led by the University of East Anglia in the UK, also identified that a small ocean gyre - a system of circulating ocean currents - next to the Thwaites Ice Shelf can impact the amount of glacial-meltwater flowing beneath it. When that gyre is weaker, more warm water can access the areas beneath the ice shelf, causing it to melt. Meanwhile, another study says that existing conservation efforts are insufficient to protect Antarctic ecosystems, and population declines are...
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