Doom Today: UN Says Some Glaciers May Not Survive By The End Of The Century

I’d say “who gets fired when this doesn’t happen”, but, really, there are lots and lots of glaciers which have disappeared since the end of the last glacial age. That’s why this is called an inter-glacial. And then glaciers will come back during a Holocene cool period. Then disappear during the warm period that follows

End of eternal ice: Many glaciers will not survive this century, climate scientists say

Together with ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, glaciers lock up about 70 per cent of the world’s freshwater reserves. They are striking indicators of climate change as they typically remain about the same size in a stable climate.

But, with rising temperatures and global warming triggered by human-induced climate change, they are melting at unprecedented speed, said Sulagna Mishra, a scientific officer at the World Meteorological Organization

Last year, glaciers in Scandinavia, the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard and North Asia experienced the largest annual loss of overall mass on record. Glaciologists determine the state of a glacier by measuring how much snow falls on it and how much melt occurs every year, according to UN partner the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) at the University of Zurich.

How far back does that record go? Can it incorporate the previous Holocene warm periods for scientific integrity?

The latest data indicates that 25 to 30 per cent of sea level rise comes from glacier melt, according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service.

Melting snowcaps are causing sea levels to rise about one millimetre higher every year, a figure that might seem insignificant, yet every millimetre will flood another 200,000 to 300,000 persons every year.

Man, they are really going full Doom, eh?

WGMS’s Mr. Zemp, who also teaches glaciology at the University of Zurich, is already preparing for a world without glaciers.

“If I think of my children, I am living in a world with maybe no glaciers. That’s actually quite alarming,” he told UN News.

“I really recommend going with your children there and having a look at it because you can see the dramatic changes that are going on, and you will also realise that we are putting a big burden on our next generation.”

And how will they get there? Fossil fueled travel? Maybe they can talk about the glaciers during the next UN climate conference in Brazil after tens of thousands take fossil fueled trips.

Echoing those concerns, WMO’s Ms. Mishra added that if emissions of warming greenhouse gases are not slowed “and the temperatures are rising at the rate they are at the moment, by the end of 2100, we are going to lose 80 per cent of the small glaciers” across Europe, East Africa, Indonesia and elsewhere.

And if that doesn’t happen? Well, none of the people making the prognostications will be around to be fired.

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