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Mountain glaciers are melting at an accelerating rate.
How do we know? 📐
Scientists have been making field measurements of glaciers like this one since the 1960s, as well as using aerial and satellite imagery to track the size of glaciers.
In 2022, a survey of 37 mountain glaciers across the globe found that 34 of those glaciers had lost mass. Scientists found that, on average, glaciers lost more than 3 feet (one meter) of ice thickness that year, and that ice loss from mountain glaciers globally has been accelerating over time.
Even in the far north and in a wet climate, Norway’s Ålfotbreen glacier, pictured above, is rapidly diminishing. This glacier had grown as recently as the 1990s, but has been shrinking since then due to more frequent and intense heat waves.
Video description:
A short video that fades back and forth between two satellite images. Both images show the same glacier, in August 2003 and September 2022. In the 2022 image, the glacier is smaller. Both images were taken during summers where significant melting occurred and in both cases the glacial ice is slightly gray or brown, because the previous winter’s snow had largely melted off the glacier.
The landscape consists of light brown mountains with layered rock ledges. Dark green forests cover the lower slopes and foothills.
#NASA #climatechange #Earth #glaciers
