I had the great fortune of visiting Alaska 25 years ago. I not only got to see glaciers from a ship and a helicopter, I also got to walk on glaciers and explore them. It was thrilling! A few years ago, I looked at photographs of those very same glaciers I had seen and experienced. I compared those 2019 photographs to those I had taken back in 1997. Those older photographs bore little resemblance to the photographs taken 22 years later. The difference was shocking because so much of the glaciers had disappeared leaving bare rock facades where there once were rivers of ice. Glaciers are melting fast!
Sadly, the Pyrenees glacier, which is a World Heritage Site, is projected to melt by 2050 because of Climate Change. A World Heritage Site is a cultural or natural cite which has “Outstanding Universal Value” and thought to have special importance for everyone. Machu Picchu, the Great Barrier Reef, the Great Wall of China, Yellowstone National, and the Taj Mahal are a few of the other World Heritage Sites.
According to scientific research, glaciers in one-third of World Heritage Sites are also projected to melt away by 2050. This includes Kilimanjaro National Park and Mount Kenya in Africa, Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks, and glaciers in New Zealand and China. Studies indicate they are all melting because of the amount of greenhouse gases released by humans. On July 3, 2022, a massive avalanche in the Marmolada Glacier on Mount Marmolada in the province of Trentino, Italy, was triggered by a collapsing serac (a block or column of glacial ice),and 11 mountaineers were killed. The serac collapse was due to the high temperatures that day and the lower end of the glacier snapped off.
Pakistan has more than 7,200 glaciers, which is more than anywhere on Earth except for the north and south poles. Rising temperatures from climate change are melting the glaciers faster and earlier and adding to already swollen rivers and streams that are flooding from torrential rains in the summer monsoons. In the summer of 2022, 1,700 were killed, and 33million people were affected by the floods. The floods also killed over one million heads of livestock.
Besides losing the natural wonder, historical significance, and the meteorological effects of our glaciers, what else do we stand to lose? Half of the people on Earth directly or indirectly depend on glaciers as their primary or sole source of water for agriculture, hydropower, and domestic use. What will happen as the glaciers retreat causing a decrease in glacial runoff? The local communities will be the first to experience adverse impacts. Retreating and disappearing glaciers will negatively impact glacier tourism. More importantly, agricultural production will be hurt, which may lead to food insecurity. In addition, less available fresh water from glacial runoff is likely to lead to water stress and water insecurity, especially with an increase in population and an increasing need for more farmland to produce food.
Scientists agree that it is necessary to drastically reduce carbon emissions to limit or prevent significant glacier loss and retreat around the world. If we wait too long to make worldwide decisions and begin making these drastic reductions, the glaciers may be gone, and we won’t even have a choice anymore. Some scientists believe that 95% of sea ice ( the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic) is already gone, and that even if we significantly curb carbon emissions in the next 20 or 30 years, more than one-third of Earth’s glaciers will have melted prior to 2100.
CAN YOU IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT GLACIERS? We will get into greater detail about the effects of melting ice on Earth’s weather and climate in our next article.
Sources:
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2022/8/30/23327341/pakistan-flooding-monsoon-melting-glaciers-climate-change
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/compelling-before-and-after-satellite-photos-of-climate-change/8/?ftag=CNM-00-10aac3a
https://phys.org/news/2022-11-ice-loss-northeastern-greenland-significantly.html
https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/11/03/one-third-of-glaciers-in-world-heritage-sites-will-disappear-by-2050-new-study-shows
