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 […]
Glaciers as a water resource Read More »
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
Global glacier recession Read More »
This section of the website highlights how glaciers interact with climate, and how changing climate is changing glaciers around the world today. Globally, glaciers are receding and shrinking in response to atmospheric warming. The signal is remarkably consistent across different continents and mountain ranges. Glaciers are a critical water resource in many mountain regions of
Glaciers and Climate Read More »
A new paper by Levermann et al. in PNAS uses the record of past rates of sea level rise from palaeo archives and numerical computer models to understand how much sea level rise we can expect per degree of warming in the future. These data suggest that we can expect a global sea level rise
Sea level rise over the next 2000 years Read More »
Introduction | Temperatures are rising | Ice shelves are collapsing | Glaciers are shrinking | Glaciers are thinning | Glaciers are accelerating | Sea level is rising | Impact of climate on glaciers | References | Comments | Introduction What is happening around the Antarctic Peninsula? This is a region of very rapid warming, and
Glacier change in Antarctica Read More »
This webpage is a shortened and simplified version of the Davies and Glasser 2012 paper published in Journal of Glaciology. Introduction | Results | Glacier Change | Conclusions | References | Comments | Introduction The Little Ice Age The Little Ice Age (LIA) is widely recognised in places like the Alps in the northern hemisphere,
Shrinking Patagonian Glaciers Read More »
A global system | Dynamic ice streams | Rapid changes | The past is the key to the present | Reconstructing ancient ice sheets | A large jigsaw with many pieces | Further Reading | References | Comments | A global system Why should we study Antarctic glaciers? What can we learn from them? Antarctica
Why study Antarctic Glaciers? Read More »
Antarctic Peninsula environmental change | Antarctic Peninsula glacier change | References | Comments | This page is largely from Davies et al. 2012 (open access) and Glasser et al. 2011. Download the PDF for Davies et al. 2012. Antarctic Peninsula environmental change Numerous recent papers have documented increasing atmospheric[1-3] and oceanic temperatures[4, 5] across the
Antarctic Peninsula glacier change Read More »
