A future without glaciers, 2 out of 3 are at risk by 2100 – Terra & Poli

It heralds a future without glaciers, ever since two out of three Maybe disappear by the year 2100 Because Climate changeThis is the worst-case scenario predicted by the study published In the journal Science and led by the American Carnegie Mellon University. Research indicates that i Most threatened glaciers she smallestthose who haveThe extension is less than 1 square kilometerand are located in Central Europeincluding the Alps, Western Canada And the United State.

the new modelon the basis of a An unprecedented amount of data And for all the glaciers on Earth, more than 215,000And on different Forecasting from the increase temperature worldwide. Also in A more optimistic scenarioas the temperature increase will not exceed 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, anyway Lost over there half affiliate glaciers.

the dissolution rates Of the glaciers, researchers led by David Ronse note, are constantly increasing In recent decades, these processes will severely affect, among other things, sea level rise and the availability of fresh water for billions of people. Being able to predict glacier mass loss as accurately as possible is critical to understanding how the environment will change and to guide efforts to adapt and mitigate future global climate.

To improve current forecasts, which are usually limited to narrow geographic areas, the researchers harnessed an unprecedented amount of data covering all the world’s glaciers (except those in Greenland and Antarctica), and processed it thanks to supercomputers. The results show that glaciers will lose between 26% and 41% of their mass by the end of the century, depending on a temperature increase of between 1.5 and 4 degrees. This means that, in the best-case scenario, about 50% of the glaciers will disappear, while in the worst-case scenario, 80%, about two out of three, will be lost. Based on current climate policy commitments, which indicate a 2.7-degree increase in global temperatures, it is likely that we will see almost all sea ice disappear from entire regions. This, in turn, would lead to a much larger contribution to sea level rise than would be expected, with significant impacts on water supplies, tourism and local culture.

“The way glaciers respond to climate change is taking a long time,” the study authors note. “Even an immediate reduction in emissions will not remove previously emitted greenhouse gases, nor can it immediately halt all ongoing processes that contribute to climate change. This means – they add – that even a complete halt in emissions would still require between 30 and 100 years to be reflected in mass loss rates. glacier”. It may be too late, therefore, to avoid the loss of many glaciers, but efforts to limit the increase in global average temperature will still affect the number of glaciers we can save.