Glaciers melting away
The world’s largest tropical glacier is in danger of disappearing within five years.
Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson and a team of scientists said this time last year in San Francisco they have found evidence the Qori Kalis glacier in the Peruvian Andes could lose half its mass in 12 months and could be gone five years from now.
The rate of retreat has increased tenfold over the last 15 years. Artic retreat is also of concern, and recently Antarctic retreat has been found to have increased 75% in the last ten years.
Greenland and Artic
On Baffin Island just west of Greenland, the ice caps on the northern plateau in the Canadian Arctic have shrunk by more than 50 percent in the last half century. They are expected to disappear by the middle of the century. The 196,000 square-mile Baffin Island is the fifth largest island in the world, and most of it within the Arctic Circle.
Temperatures across the Arctic have been rising substantially in recent decades as a result of the build up of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere. Studies in Greenland indicate temperatures on the ice sheet have climbed 7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1991.
Alps, Himalayas, Andes
Mountains always seem so permanent, but they are changing shape too.
Hydrologist Rolf Weingartner describes mountains as the Earth’s “water towers”. His team discovered, for instance, that 44% of the total volume of the Rhine emanates from the Alps, although they are only 15% of the river’s actual catchment area as seen from above on a map.
Growing drought
In the case of some rivers, such as the Niger and Nile, about 90% of the flow derives from mountains. As with these areas, in northern Kashmir, subsistence farmers have relied on the steady spring and summer drip-feed of melting snow and ice. Meticulously constructed irrigation channels use the precious water efficiently.
Now the pattern seems to be changing. Dwindling winter snow and shrinking glaciers are resulting in a slower flow. Worse, the unprecedented summer rains are destroying the terraced fields. Famine is foreseeable in these upland areas.
Coal and Ice
Glaciers hold vast amounts of water locked away from the rapidly flowing water cycle. Their slow take-up and release of water acts like a battery, much as coal & oil have for the carbon cycle.
Global warming is progressively interfering with the water reservoir, and speeding climate change as it does so. This is due to the increasing area of dark surface the planet shows to the sun as the ice melts; then it abosorbs heat and warms the atmosphere even more.
Mountains and glaciers are the barometers of our planet’s climate.
But glacial retreat is more than just an early warning, it is a threat too.
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