A 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 MoreTag: melting glaciers
# 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...
Read MoreThe combination of global atmospheric warming and westerly winds shifting toward the poles will likely speed up the recession of mountain glaciers in both hemispheres, according to a UMaine study. Mountain glaciers freeze and gain mass when the climate cools, and melt and lose mass when the climate warms. The extent to which the fluctuations in mountain glaciers are reflective of local, regional and even hemispheric climate variations, however, is less clear, which has made it more difficult for scientists to use glacial data to interpret past climate dynamics and make predictions for the future. A team of researchers from the University of Maine conducted a National Science Foundation-funded study evaluating how atmospheric conditions are reflected in the mass fluctuations of m...
Read MoreMajor glaciers, including Dolomites and Yosemite, to disappear by 2050 – U.N. report
Some of the world's most famous glaciers, including in the Dolomites in Italy, the Yosemite and Yellowstone parks in the United States and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania are set to disappear by 2050 due to global warming, whatever the temperature rise scenario, according to a UNESCO report. FILE PHOTO: Visitors near Glacier Point wait for the sun to rise in Yosemite National Park, California, U.S. July 2, 2021. REUTERS/Tracy Barbutes The United Nations cultural agency UNESCO monitors some 18,600 glaciers across 50 of its World Heritage sites and said that glaciers in one third of World Heritage sites will disappear by 2050 regardless of the applied climate scenario. While the rest can be saved by keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) relative to...
Read MoreWarmer air is thinning most of the vast mountain range’s glaciers, known as the Third Pole because they contain so much ice. The melting could have far-reaching consequences for flood risk and for water security for a billion people who rely on meltwater for their survival. Spring came early this year in the high mountains of Gilgit-Baltistan, a remote border region of Pakistan. Record temperatures in March and April hastened melting of the Shisper Glacier, creating a lake that swelled and, on May 7, burst through an ice dam. A torrent of water and debris flooded the valley below, damaging fields and houses, wrecking two power plants, and washing away parts of the main highway and a bridge connecting Pakistan and China. Pakistan’s climate change minister, Sherry Rehman, tweeted vide...
Read More