According to recent findings, 83 percent of the world's glaciers may vanish by the year in question.
According to the study's authors, 83 percent of the world's glaciers will likely vanish by the year 2100 under the unlikely worst-case scenario of several degrees of warming.
jan 5 2023
According to a recent study, the world's glaciers are melting and receding more quickly than previously anticipated, with two-thirds of them expected to disappear by the end of the century if present climate change trends continue.
However, the study found that if efforts are made to keep global warming to only a few more tenths of a degree and achieve international targets, which is theoretically feasible but highly improbable, just less than half of the world's glaciers will vanish. The majority of tiny, well-known glaciers are on the verge of extinction, according to the study's authors.
According to the experts, 83 percent of the world's glaciers will likely vanish by the year 2100 under the worst-case scenario of several degrees of warming.
With the exception of those atop ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, all 215,000 land-based glaciers on the planet were thoroughly evaluated in the study, which was published in the journal Science on Thursday. The number of glaciers that would vanish, the amount of ice that would melt (in billions of tonnes), and the amount that it would contribute to sea level rise were then calculated by scientists using computer models and various levels of global warming.
Currently, the globe is projected to have warmed by 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, which would result in a loss of 68 percent of the world's glaciers and 32 percent of its glacial mass by the year 2100.
According to the study's principal author David Rounce, this would cause sea levels to rise by an additional 115 millimetres (4.5 inches), on top of the already-growing seas brought on by melting ice sheets and warmer ocean.
According to Rounce, a Carnegie Mellon University glaciologist and engineering professor, "no matter what, we're going to lose a lot of the glaciers." But if we keep the number of glaciers we lose to a minimum, we can still have an impact.
According to research co-author Regine Hock, a glaciologist from the Universities of Alaska Fairbanks and Oslo in Norway, "it is too late for many tiny glaciers." To maintain as much ice as possible stored up in the glaciers, our results internationally demonstrate that every degree of global warming counts.
According to the report, projected ice loss by the year 2100 varies between 38.7 trillion metric tonnes and 64.4 trillion tonnes, depending on how much the planet warms and how much coal, oil, and gas are consumed.
The Okjokull glacier in central Iceland has shrunk as seen in this combo of photographs taken by NASA on September 14, 1986, left, and August 1, 2019, right [File: NASA via AP]More than anticipated
According to the study, all that melting ice will result in an increase in sea level of anywhere between 90mm (3.5 inches) in the best case and 166mm in the worst case, or four to fourteen percent higher than prior predictions.
According to climate change expert and CEO of Climate Central, Ben Strauss, 4.5 inches of sea level rise from glaciers would result in more than 10 million people living below the high tide mark globally and more than 100,000 people above it in the United States.
The surge from Superstorm Sandy in 2012 increased by nearly four inches due to the sea level rise brought on by 20th-century climate change. Damage from that alone cost roughly $8 billion, he claimed.
According to scientists, melting ice sheets rather than glaciers will be the primary cause of future sea level rise.
Even so, there are other factors at play in the melting of glaciers. According to scientists speaking to The Associated Press, this will result in a significant portion of the world's population having less access to water, increased risk of flooding, and the loss of historically ice-covered regions from Alaska to the Alps to the region near Mount Everest's base camp.
The director of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, Mark Serreze, who was not involved in the study but complimented it, stated that glaciers are "part of what makes these landscapes so spectacular" for areas like the Alps or Iceland. "In a way, they lose their spirit along with their ice."
One of the best-studied glaciers in the world, the Vernagtferner glacier in the Austrian Alps, was mentioned by Hock as one that "will be gone."
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