glacier recession Archives - Page 2 of 3 AntarcticGlaciers.org

Accelerating glacier volume loss on Juneau Icefield

Posted on 03/07/2024 / by Bethan Davies / tagged glacier recession, Juneau, plateau

This article summarises the following publication: Davies, B.J., McNabb, R., Bendle, J.M., Carrivick, J.L., Ely, J.C., Holt, T., Markle, B.R., McNeil, C., Nicholson, L., Pelto, M., 2024. Accelerating glacier volume loss on Juneau Icefield driven by hypsometry and melt-accelerating feedbacks. Nature Communications 15, 5099. For a more straightforward summary of this article, go here. Summary […]

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Shrinking glaciers in Bhutan

Posted on 11/01/2024 / by Guest / tagged case-study, glacier recession, GLOF, hazard, Himalaya, lakes, meltwater, Post-16

By Alex Hyde The sub-tropical glaciers of Bhutan Bhutan is a small mountainous nation located in the Eastern Himalaya, with a population of around 727 000 people (Figure 1). The country has a sub-tropical climate in its south, where it borders lowland plains, and a Himalayan subalpine climate to the north where it meets the

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Observing and Monitoring Glaciers and Ice Sheets

Posted on 26/10/2023 / by Bethan Davies / tagged glacier recession, radar, remote sensing, UAVs

The world’s glaciers and ice sheets are changing. Observations of glacier velocity (speed of ice flow), thickness, length and area alongside measurements of climate help us to understand this change. We can monitor these changes via remote sensing (using data from sensors mounted remotely, on things like UAVs and satellites), as well as from in

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Calculating glacier volume change from Space

Posted on 12/06/2023 / by Guest / tagged Glacier, glacier recession

This article on glacier volume change was written by Ethan Lee, from Newcastle University. Introduction Around the world, glaciers provide water for 2 billion people, however almost all glaciers are melting and shrinking reducing the amount of water available to them. We need to know how much glaciers are melting by and at what rate,

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Changing Alaska

Posted on 14/06/2022 / by Bethan Davies / tagged glacier recession, Juneau

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. See all our work on Juneau Icefield here: Juneau Accelerated loss from

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New paper: Millan et al. 2022: a new estimate of global glacier ice volume and ice velocity

Posted on 07/02/2022 / by Bethan Davies / tagged Glacier, glacier recession, remote sensing, water resource

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.

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Glacier recession around the Greenland Ice Sheet

Posted on 07/02/2022 / by Bethan Davies / tagged glacier recession, greenland, Post-16, tidewater glacier

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

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What does COP26 mean for global glacier and ice sheet change?

Posted on 06/01/2022 / by Holly Jenkins / tagged Climate change, glacier recession, Sea level rise, water resource

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,

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Water resources

Posted on 23/06/2020 / by Bethan Davies / tagged glacier recession, Post-16, resource, water resource

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

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The world’s mountain ‘water towers’ are melting, putting 1.9 billion people at risk

Posted on 08/01/2020 / by Bethan Davies / tagged glacier recession, water resource

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

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