The melting of ice across the planet is accelerating at a record pace, with the melting of the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica accelerating the fastest, research has found.
The rate of loss is now in line with the worst-case scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading authority on climate change, according to an article published in The Cryosphere magazine on Monday.
Thomas Slater, lead author and research fellow at the Center for Polar Observation and Modeling at the University of Leeds, warned that the effects would be felt around the world. “The sea level rise on this scale will have very serious consequences for these coastal communities,” he said.
About 28 tonnes of ice were lost between 1994 and 2017, which according to the newspaper’s authors would be enough to place a 100-meter-thick ice sheet across the UK. About two-thirds of the ice loss was caused by the warming of the atmosphere, while about a third was caused by the warming of the sea.
During the period studied, the rate of ice loss accelerated by 65%, according to the paper, from 0.8 tons tons per year in the nineties to 1.3 billion tons per year by 2017. About half of all the ice lost has, was from land, which contributes directly to world sea level rise. The ice loss during the study period, from 1994 to 2017, increased the sea level by 35 millimeters.
The largest amounts of ice were lost by floating ice in the polar regions, increasing the risk of a return mechanism known as albedo loss. White ice reflects solar radiation back into space – the albedo effect – but as floating sea ice melts, it exposes dark water that absorbs more heat, further accelerating warming in a feedback loop.
Glaciers showed the next largest loss of ice volume, with more than 6 tonnes lost between 1994 and 2017, about a quarter of the global ice loss during the period. The shrinkage of glaciers in some regions threatens to cause both floods and water shortages, because because large amounts melt, it can overwhelm downstream areas, then glaciers shrink less from the steady water flow needed for agriculture.
Inès Otosaka, co-author of the report and a PhD researcher at the University of Leeds Center for Polar Observation and Modeling, said: ‘Apart from contributing to the global average sea level rise, mountain glaciers are also critical as’ a freshwater resource for local communities. The retreat of glaciers around the world is therefore of great importance, both locally and globally. ”
The study, entitled Earth’s Ice Balance, used satellite observations over a period of 23 years to assess ice around the world. Previous studies have examined continents rather than conducting a comprehensive assessment of the data. The research team included the University of Edinburgh, University College London and Earthwave, a computer science organization, and was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council.