The icefields of Alaska are dramatically thinning, resulting in a significant contribution to global sea level rise. This is partly because there is a large volume of ice in Alaska (see Millan et al., 2022), but also due to warming in this region. Juneau Icefield This section of the website includes a series of articles …
An interesting new paper has just been published in Nature Geoscience by Romain Millan, Jeremie Mouginot, Antoine Rabatel and Mathieu Morligheim on the velocity and thickness of the world’s glaciers. They make a revised estimate of global glacier ice volume. They aren’t looking at ice in the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets, just glaciers worldwide. …
The outlet glaciers of the Greenland Ice Sheet are receding, calving more icebergs, and flowing faster. Further in land, the ice sheet is thinning, and there is more surface melt. The Greenland Ice Sheet is drained by outlet glaciers that flow through deep fjords to the ocean. In the image below, you can see an …
Glacier recession around the Greenland Ice Sheet Read More »
Earth’s glaciers are shrinking at an alarming rate. Each year they are losing more mass than is being replenished in each accumulation season.28 trillion tonnes of ice was lost from 1994 to 2017, and rates have risen by 57% since the 1990s. At present, global ice volume is shrinking at a rate of 267±16 Gt/year, …
What does COP26 mean for global glacier and ice sheet change? Read More »
Mountains around the world provide water for downstream communities. Glaciers and snowpacks store the water, and release it in dry seasons as the snow and ice melts. Glaciers are therefore a water resource, but this water resource is threatened by glacier recession. Water is essential for life on Earth. Human societies use water to irrigate …
Bethan Davies, Royal Holloway The year 2019 concludes a decade of exceptional heat, and is on track to be the second or third warmest year on record. While the global average temperature teeters on 1.1°C above the pre-industrial record, the world’s glaciers are in stark retreat. In high mountain areas, the steady trickle of melting …
The world’s mountain ‘water towers’ are melting, putting 1.9 billion people at risk Read More »
Mountains as Water Towers of the World In many mountainous parts of the world with a seasonal rainfall, glaciers are a reliable water resource in the dry season. Mountains could be called the “Water Towers of the World”1, providing water from glacier melt and orographic rainfall to lowland regions. Glacierised drainage basins cover 26% of …
How much land ice is there in the World? Most (99.5%) of the permanent ice volume in the world is locked up in ice sheets and glaciers. The Antarctic Ice Sheet is the largest store of frozen freshwater; it would raise sea levels by 57.9 m (its “sea level equivalent”, or SLE) on full melting …
What is the global volume of land ice and how is it changing? Read More »
The Antarctic Peninsula is warming very rapidly, about six times the global average[1-3]. There has been a 95% increase in positive degree day sums since 1948[4]. Glaciers in the region are accelerating, in response to frontal thinning and recession[5]. In addition, ice shelves are collapsing[6], glacier fronts are retreating[7]. The causes for much of these …
Antarctic Peninsula has strong sensitivity to surface warming Read More »
Worldwide, glaciers are shrinking and receding. In fact, glacier recession and thermal expansion of the ocean together account for 75% of today’s observed sea level rise. Glaciers are small and have short response times, so they react quickly to changes in air temperature and precipitation. Glaciers around the Antarctic Peninsula are shrinking particularly rapidly, and …
