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Africa’s Disappearing Glaciers Signal ‘Irreversible’ Threat to Earth System: Report

October 20, 2021

Africa’s Disappearing Glaciers Signal ‘Irreversible’ Threat to Earth System: Report

The authors of a U.N. report urge greater investment in climate adaptation and weather services on the continent.
A new United Nations-backed report reveals the extent of Africa’s “disproportionate vulnerability” to the climate emergency, with the continent’s three glaciers expected to disappear entirely in the next two decades as the population faces the increasingly dire effects of the heating of the planet.
“Total deglaciation” of the glaciers of the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is expected by the 2040s, while the Mount Kenya massif could lose its ice caps a decade sooner, “which will make it one of the first entire mountain ranges to lose glacier cover due to human-induced climate change,” according to the State of the Climate in Africa 2020 report.

“In sub-Saharan Africa, climate change could further lower gross domestic product (GDP) by up to 3% by 2050.”

The loss of the three glaciers in East Africa, which are retreating at faster rates than the global average, “signals the threat of imminent and irreversible change to the Earth system,” said World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.
“Administrative barriers” currently put long term observation efforts at the mountains’ summits at risk of being abandoned, according to the report by the WMO, the African Union Commission (AUC), the Economic Commission for Africa, and other agencies—but the authors noted that “investing in climate adaptation, early warning systems, and weather and climate services can pay off.”
“In sub-Saharan Africa, climate change could further lower gross domestic product (GDP) by up to 3% by 2050,” wrote Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko, commissioner for rural economy and agriculture at the AUC. “This presents a serious challenge for climate adaptation and resilience actions because not only are physical conditions getting worse, but also the number of people being affected is increasing.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How The Big Melt Will Change Life for People and Nature

May 12, 2021

How The Big Melt Will Change Life for People and Nature

As BC’s coastal mountain glaciers recede the effects alter ecosystems. Can human engineering begin to compensate? Second in a series.

PacificDolphinsKnightInlet.jpg
Pacific white-sided dolphins cruise Knight Inlet. The fjord that receives the melting waters of the Klinaklini Glacier has been home to First Nations for millennia. Photo: Knight Inlet Lodge.

[Editor’s note: To read the first instalment of The Big Melt, a special Tyee series, go here.]

When William Glendale was 10-years-old, his logger father was away for work so much, he bought his son a boat and a .30-30 rifle. “My father told me, ‘When your mom wants fish, go fishing. When she wants meat, go get her a deer.’” Sixty years later, no one knows Knight Inlet better than William Glendale — a Hereditary Chief with the Da’naxda’xw/Awaetlala First Nation, whose traditional territory includes the upper portion of the inlet. (The Mamalilikulla and Tlowitsis First Nations have territories overlapping the inlet out towards Johnstone Strait.)

Knight Inlet is the deep glacial fjord that receives the melting waters of the Klinaklini Glacier on B.C.’s central coast. As long as the Klinaklini Glacier has existed, Glendale’s forebearers have lived in its proximity.

But their future is cast in shadow by research led by B.C. glaciologist Brian Menounos, a professor at University of Northern British Columbia and a Hakai Institute affiliate. As the first story in this series explained, their findings show that the last two decades have been disastrous for western North America’s mountain glaciers, particularly for those on the south and central Coast Mountains, including the Klinaklini Glacier — the largest glacier in western North America south of the Alaskan border.

In 2018, Menounos and his collaborators published research that revealed that glaciers across western North America are melting faster than previously assumed, and that melting had accelerated about four-fold in just the last decade.

The 470-square-kilometre Klinaklini, like many glaciers of the south and central Coast Mountains, is expected to lose at least 70 per cent of its total ice by the end of the century, and as this happens, an ecosystem that has evolved in tandem with the glacier will be upended.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Greenland’s largest glaciers nearing rates of melt expected in ‘worst-case scenario’

November 19, 2020

Greenland’s largest glaciers nearing rates of melt expected in ‘worst-case scenario’

Greenland’s three biggest glaciers added the equivalent of around 8mm to global sea levels from 1880 to 2012, study says

Photo of Jakobshavn Isbræ, one of Greenland’s largest glaciers
Photo of Jakobshavn Isbræ, one of Greenland’s largest glaciers
 (Shfaqat Abbas Khan, DTU Space Denmark)
Greenland’s largest glaciers are currently melting at levels close to what scientists had previously expected under a future “worst-case scenario”, a study has found.

Using a combination of aerial photographs and field data, the study found that current rates of mass loss from Greenland’s three largest glaciers are higher than once thought.

The melting of these three glaciers added the equivalent of around 8mm to global sea levels from 1880 to 2012, according to the research.

Previous  had estimated that the same three glaciers would contribute 9-15mm to global sea levels by 2100 under a “worst-case scenario”.

The Greenland ice sheet is a mass of frozen freshwater sitting on the island of Greenland that is around 1.7m square kilometres in size. This is about three times the size of Texas.

As a result of climbing air and ocean temperatures, the ice sheet is losing mass each year. The loss of mass from Greenland’s glaciers is, in turn, causing sea levels to rise.

The research, published in , focuses on the “big three” glaciers in Greenland: Jakobshavn Isbræ, Kangerlussuaq Glacier and Helheim Glacier. These glaciers together hold enough ice to raise sea levels by around 1.3 metres, if they melted completely.

It found that the amount of sea level rise from the melting of these three glaciers is already nearing rates previously expected under a future “worst-case” scenario.

This suggests that, if the world were to see extremely high emissions in the coming decades, ice loss from Greenland’s glaciers would be considerably higher than previously projected, explains study author Prof Jonathan Bamber, a glaciologist at the University of Bristol.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Himalayan glaciers that supply water to a billion people are melting fast

December 6, 2019

Himalayan glaciers that supply water to a billion people are melting fast

Preface. The Himalayan glaciers that supply water to a billion people are melting fast, already 30% has been lost since 1975.

Adding to the crisis are the 400 dams under construction or planned for Himalayan rivers in India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bhutan to generate electricity and for water storage.  The dams’ reservoirs and transmission lines will destroy biodiversity, thousands of houses, towns, villages, fields, 660 square miles of forests, and even parts of the highest highway of the world, the Karakoram highway. The dam projects are at risk of collapse from earthquakes in this seismically active region and of breach from flood bursts from glacial lakes upstream. Dams also threaten to intensify flooding downstream during intense downpours when reservoirs overflow (IR 2008, Amrith 2018).

Since the water flows to 16 nations, clearly these dams could cause turmoil and even war if river flows are cut off from downstream countries.  Three of these nations, India, Pakistan, and China, have nuclear weapons.

It’s already happening. After a terrorist attack that killed 40 Indian police officers in Kashmir, Indiadecided to retaliate by cutting off some river water that continues on to Pakistan, “adding an extra source of conflict between two nuclear-armed neighbors”. Pakistan is one of the most water-stressed countries in the world with seriously depleted underground aquifers and less storage behind their two largest dams due to silt (Johnson 2019).

***

Wu, K. 2019. Declassified spy images show Earth’s ‘Third Pole’ is melting fast.  Accelerating ice melt in the Himalayas may imperil up to a billion people in South Asia who rely on glacier runoff for drinking water and more. PBS.org

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pounding Heat Clobbers Greenland

August 6, 2019

Pounding Heat Clobbers Greenland

Photograph Source: Ralf Roletschek – GFDL 1.2

Greenland is one of the biggest targets for global warming, in part, because it’s so big it’s hard to miss. And sure enough, only recently crazy halting weather with inordinate hot temperature hit Greenland bull’s-eye, dead-on with one helluva meltdown.

That’s bad news for pretty much everybody on the planet.

On the hottest days, the melt-off could fill 3 billion Olympic-sized pools end-to-end, extending from California to Maine, back and forth, 17,000 times. Eureka! That’s only one day. It’s staggering.

What’s going on?

The easy answer: Greenland is melting because global warming is acting up, a lot. But, it’s more complicated. Part of the meltdown includes a 4-mile-wide iceberg that broke off the Helheim Glacier July 11th. That’s equivalent to a small town floating/melting along the southeastern coastline of Greenland.

In that regard, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists: “Climate Hot Map, Helheim Glacier – The glacier was stable from the 1950s to 2000.” Thereafter, rapidly rising temps jarred it loose from its stable moorings, losing five miles of ice in its first five years of the 21stcentury. Oops! So much for 50 years of stability.

In point of fact, Greenland’s glaciers, in toto, have doubled their rate of retreat this century, which is more than any historical data. That’s not only ominous, it’s indicative of the enormous power behind anthropogenic turbo-charged climate change. It’s happening fast and faster.

But still, it’s not unusual for parts of Greenland to melt every summer when the planet tilts its northern face towards the sun. Then, year-by-year with regularity about 10% of the ice sheet hits a melting point. However, this year the first big heat wave in June hit 45% of the ice sheet with melting points as air temps hovered 10°C to 15°C above normal, which is beach weather for Greenland.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Global warming to date could ‘obliterate’ a third of glacier ice

March 21, 2018

Global warming to date could ‘obliterate’ a third of glacier ice

The warming the world has already experienced could be enough to melt more than a third of the world’s glaciers outside Antarctica and Greenland – regardless of current efforts to reduce emissions.

That is the stark conclusion of a new study, which analyses the lag between global temperature rise and the retreat of glaciers.

The relatively slow response of glaciers to global warming means it will take to the end of the century – and beyond – to see the benefits of mitigation efforts in the coming decades, the study says.

The “baked in” glacier loss from observed warming has largely been overlooked, another scientist tells Carbon Brief, meaning “we really are on course to obliterate many of these mountain landscapes”.

Ice cube

Glaciers are huge rivers of ice that ooze their way over land, powered by gravity and their own sheer weight. They accumulate ice from snowfall and lose it through melting.

As global temperatures have risen, many of the world’s glaciers have already started to shrink and retreat. Continued warming could see many iconic landscapes – from the Canadian Rockies to the Mount Everest region of the Himalayas – lose almost all their glaciers by the end of the century.

But glacier retreat does not happen overnight. So if global temperature rise stopped immediately, how much of the world’s glacier ice could be saved? And for how much is its fate already sealed?

This is what the new study, published in Nature Climate Change, aims to work out.

The study focuses on the lag between rising temperatures and how quickly glaciers adjust. An ice cube makes a suitable metaphor, as three of the authors – Prof Ben Marzeion, Dr Georg Kaser and Dr Fabien Maussion – explain to Carbon Brief over email:

“If you take an ice cube from the fridge – i.e. from one climate – to the kitchen table – i.e. a new climate – it will, finally, but not instantaneously, melt. The time it takes to fully melt the cube depends on: a) the size of the cube; and b) the temperature in your kitchen.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In Northern Canada Peaks, Scientists Are Tracking Impact of Vanishing Ice

August 28, 2015

In Northern Canada Peaks, Scientists Are Tracking Impact of Vanishing Ice

In the summer of 1955, a floatplane flew a small group of American climbers to the edge of a massive icefield straddling the Continental Divide along the Yukon/Northwest Territories border in northern

Canada. When the group saw the cluster of jagged peaks and sheer rock walls they were searching for, they were stunned: Emerging from the edges of the Brintnell/Bologna icefield was a 9,000-foot palisade of ice-polished granite that bore an uncanny resemblance to the craggy spires of Yosemite.

Having underestimated the challenge he and his team would confront that day, expedition leader Arnold Wexler turned to his partners and declared most of the icy peaks to be “unclimbable.” Today, still largely untrodden because of its extreme remoteness, the “Cirque of the Unclimbables” remains legendary in the world of rock climbing.
cirque of the unclimbables

Canada’s Cirque of the Unclimbables, located on the edge of the Bologna/Brintnell icefields along the border of the Yukon and Northwest Territories. Ice in and around these peaks has melted back considerably over the last half-century.
All photos by Ed Struzik.

Now, however, the region is the focus of Canadian scientists for another reason: its vanishing ice. This month, I accompanied a group of Canadian researchers monitoring the retreat of the icefields surrounding the “Cirque of the Unclimbables.” The scenes that greeted us were nothing like those seen by Wexler or the scientists who took aerial photographs of the icefields in 1982. Instead of pristine, crystalized layers of firn that are typically left over from past winter seasons, we found an atrophying glacial surface darkened by sand and dirt. In several places, we came across the frozen carcasses and bones of caribou and wolverines that had fallen into crevasses decades or even centuries earlier and had melted out of the disappearing ice. 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

As Himalayan Glaciers Melt, Two Towns Face the Fallout

March 26, 2015

As Himalayan Glaciers Melt, Two Towns Face the Fallout

Recently, Buddhists at a nunnery in Zanskar Valley, a 30-mile-long alley of gray stone high in the Himalayas of northwest India, took the unprecedented step of planting an apricot tree. The valley is known as a “cold desert,” because just half an inch of rain falls a year. Temperatures in Zanskar’s highest villages drop to 40 degrees F below zero during long winters, and heavy snowfall shuts down the road linking the valley to the rest of India. Yet, to the surprise of nearly everyone in this valley of 14,000 people, the tree blossomed and then bore fruit, finally convincing local residents, who are mostly farmers, that the valley is gradually warming.

It’s not just the unusual fruit tree that has signaled a change in the climate, however. Milder weather has reduced snowfalls, stretched out the growing season, and pushed up the sowing date of fast-growing wheat, barley and lentils. Now seeds are planted in May, a full month earlier than before. Harvests are becoming a bit more reliable, too. But warmer weather has also eroded glaciers that loom thousands of feet above the valley and which provide a crucial source of water to the farmers’ irrigated fields. Accelerated melting has swelled some streams beneficially, meaning more water for some. Elsewhere, streams have dried up with dire consequences for others living in this isolated valley.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

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