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Earth’sglacierslost 300 billion tons ( 273 billion metric tons ) of ice every year on average between 2000 and 2023 , amounting to a 5 % decline in volume since the start of the millennium , a innovational new study find .
The deprivation match to some three Olympian swimming pools ' worth of methamphetamine thawing or breaking off from glacier every secondly , allot to theFrench National Center for Scientific Research(CNRS ) , which was involved in the field of study together with dozens of other research institutions .
The amount of ice lost from glaciers since 2000 is equivalent to three Olympic swimming pools per second.
This startling decline is the upshot ofglobal warmingdriven by our ballooning greenhouse gas emissions .
" We expected to find thatglaciers are melting , but the amount of ice lose in the past few long time is scandalise even for us scientist , " said lead authorMichael Zemp , a professor at the University of Zurich and film director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service .
The results revealed extreme loss in glaciers in Europe ’s Alps and Pyrenees mountains , with both neighborhood showing a 40 % downslope in glacier volume over the study time period . " In the European Alps , glaciers lost 10 % of their ice in just two single years , " Zemp told Live Science in an e-mail .
The Alps and Pyrenees mountains in Europe showed the most extreme ice losses of all the glacier regions in the new study.
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For the study , investigator amass satellite data and direct measurements of every glacier region in the world except the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet , which are both so big they have a retard reaction to thaw , Zemp said .
Scientists gathered and converted 100 of glacier - bear on datasets into time series that they could then psychoanalyse to paint a globular picture of how glacier have changed over time .
" Over the retiring 20 years we got a riches of satellite sensors to estimate glacier elevation and mess changes , " Zemp said . " While agree in general about glacier melt , the accurate number differed quite a bit from sensor to sensor " — hence the need to convince all the numbers to one formatting , Zemp said .
The results , publish Wednesday ( Feb. 19 ) in the journalNature , revealed stark regional difference in methamphetamine hydrochloride loss during the study menstruation . Glaciers in the Alps and Pyrenees get the greatest decline relative to their size , while glaciers on the subantarctic islands only lost about 2 % of their ice , according to astatementfrom the University of Zurich .
researcher also retrieve a 36 % increase in annual ice personnel casualty between the first half of the study geological period , between 2000 and 2011 , and the 2nd one-half , between 2012 and 2023 , paint a picture that icing departure is accelerating .
bar the Greenland and Antarctic ice bed sheet , glaciers worldwide held about 134,182 billion tons ( 121,728 billion metric tons ) of ice in 2000 . By 2023 , that figure had dismiss to about 126,971 billion tons ( 115,186 billion metric short ton ) , according to the discipline .
The volume of ice-skating rink fall behind from glacier during the study period get global sea level to rise by 0.7 column inch ( 18 millimeters ) , the researcher observe , which is0.1 in ( 2.5 mm ) morethan the Greenland Ice Sheet hascontributed to sea level risesince the 1990s .
ocean stratum rise is not the only peril linked to glaciers melt . " glacier are vital freshwater resources , particularly for local communities in Central Asia and Central Andes , " study carbon monoxide - authorInés Dussaillant Lehmann , a postdoctoral research worker and glaciologist at the University of Zurich , say in the instruction . Dwindling freshwater reserve from glaciers could menace piss security in these regions , according to the statement .
Looking ahead
The raw research is the first to paint a consistent global motion-picture show of glacier Methedrine exit and will provide a foundation for similar studies in the future , saidSamuel Cook , a glacier moulding expert and junior research group leader at the University of Erlangen - Nuremberg in Germany who was not involved in the study .
" This is about as robust a piece of global - scale data psychoanalysis as it ’s possible to have , " Cook told Live Science in an email . " The thing that stands out to me is the cobwebby methodical thoroughness of the authors and the scale of the discipline . "
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The first quarter of the twenty-first century saw glaciers worldwide downslope by 5 % — but this is just a fraction of what could unfold over the next 10 .
Previousmodelingrevealed that at least 25 % of the ice that remain in glaciers today will be suffer by 2100 even if we slash our greenhouse gas emission , because glacier have a retard response to clime change , Zemp said . Should emission rest the same or increment , the human beings could lose 50 % of its remaining glacier ice by the death of this C , he pronounce .
Only immediate action can stave off the regretful outcomes , Zemp said . " Every one-tenth of a level [ Celsius ] of avoided thaw will help to maintain glaciers and will relieve us from related downstream impact , " he suppose .
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