Latest news with #GlacierMassBalanceIntercomparisonExercise
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists sound alarm over findings made after studying glaciers around the globe: 'Being crushed everywhere'
Melting glaciers are a key indicator of the human-influenced changes to our climate. A recent study shows just how quickly glaciers are melting. An international team of researchers from the Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise found that glaciers have lost about 5% of their ice around the globe since 2000. Fanny Brun, a glaciologist and an author of the study, explained in an article by Le Monde that different regions had more resistance to ice melt. However, "this natural variability is being crushed everywhere by the impact of global warming." Glaciers around the world have been losing significant ice mass. From 2000 to 2023, glaciers around the globe lost the "equivalent of three Olympic swimming pools [of ice] every second," per Le Monde. The Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise team's study found that the rate of ice loss increased by about 36% from 2000-2011 to 2012-2023. This indicates that glaciers are melting more quickly than before. According to Etienne Berthier, another glaciologist-author quoted in Le Monde, glaciers in the Alps and the Pyrenees lost 10% of their ice in 2022 and 2023. Melting glacier ice contributes to global sea level rise. Coastal cities in the United States could be hit the hardest. Miami has already had to deal with negative impacts of sea level rise, with heavy rainfall also contributing to flooding conditions. Decreasing pollution to reduce warming and sea level rise is important for mitigating the worst impacts of climate change on coastal cities. A recent study found that sea levels could rise anywhere from about a foot to more than 6 feet by 2100 depending on how much pollution we contribute to the environment in the coming decades. Taking steps to mitigate climate change will benefit more than humans. Polar bears have long been the emblem of a changing Arctic region. But melting ice impacts everything from animals as big as the polar bear to organisms as small as sea algae. Do you think America has a plastic waste problem? Definitely Only in some areas Not really I'm not sure Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. The Paris climate agreement, which was adopted by almost 200 countries in December 2015, is the most ambitious international agreement to reduce global temperature increases. The goal of the agreement is to keep temperature increases well below 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to preindustrial levels, with efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). This is the point at which we might avoid the worst effects of climate change. To reduce our planet's increasing temperatures, we have to decrease our pollution from energy sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas. One way to reduce our reliance on these energy sources is to turn to clean energy. Cleaner energy sources include solar panels, wind energy, and geothermal energy. You can also use your voice to advocate for positive change to help the environment. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Researchers identify powerful new factor threatening coastlines worldwide: 'Now second largest contributor'
A new study reveals how much vanishing glaciers contribute to the rise of the world's sea level, as nearly 300 billion tons of ice are lost annually. Data from the Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise, an international scientific community initiative, played a big part in an analysis published in Nature magazine that outlined the global glacier mass changes the planet experienced from 2000 to 2023. The study revealed that vanishing glaciers are "now the second largest contributor to sea level rise," per a report in Laboratory News. According to the World Glacier Monitoring Service, more than 9,000 billion tons of glacier ice have been lost since 1975, not including the ice melt from Greenland and Antarctica's continental sheets. This loss is equivalent to a colossal ice slab the size of Germany, standing more than 80 feet tall. The 2024 hydrological year continued the concerning trend, marking the third consecutive year of net mass loss across all 19 glacier regions. "Since 2000, glaciers have lost between 2% and 39% of their ice regionally and about 5% globally," according to the study. "Glacier mass loss is about 18% larger than the loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet and more than twice that from the Antarctic Ice Sheet." During the 24-year period ending in 2023, glacier melt meant just over a 0.7-inch rise in global sea level. The World Glacier Monitoring Service director, Professor Michael Zemp, speaking to the World Meteorological Organization, acknowledged that at first glance, that might not sound impressive, "but it has a big impact: every millimeter sea-level rise exposes an additional 200,000 to 300,000 people to annual flooding." The first-ever World Day for Glaciers was held on March 21 to raise awareness about the global impacts of accelerating glacier melt. Over the past six years, five have witnessed the most rapid glacier loss ever recorded. The World Meteorological Organization warns that glaciers in many regions of the world will not survive this century. Vanishing glaciers threaten water supplies for hundreds of millions of people on our planet. Researchers from Boston College found that glacier melting was happening at an even faster pace than previously thought. They warned that as melting increases, it will drive even faster melting in the future. Scientists are actively mapping our planet's glaciers because they play a key role in cooling our planet by reflecting solar radiation that the land on Earth would otherwise absorb. Shifting away from our reliance on dirty energy sources and moving toward renewable options is vital for curbing the amount of heat-trapping gases being released into Earth's atmosphere. Do you think America could ever go zero-waste? Never Not anytime soon Maybe in some states Definitely Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. There are things we can do to help when it comes time to consider making upgrades to our homes. Making choices like buying an induction stove rather than a conventional range, a heat pump instead of a conventional HVAC system, and an EV versus a gas-powered vehicle can have an impact. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Euronews
21-03-2025
- Science
- Euronews
World Glacier Day: UN warns of ‘avalanche of cascading impacts' as ice melt increases
ADVERTISEMENT Today marks the first ever World Glaciers Day, an occasion which the UN is using to spotlight these icy landscapes which are fast disappearing. Glaciers are now 9,000 billion tonnes lighter than when records began in 1975, according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS). 'This is equivalent to a huge ice block the size of Germany with a thickness of 25 metres,' says the service's director, Prof. Dr. Michael Zemp. As the planet warms up, glacier loss is accelerating. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO)'s new State of the Global Climate report revealed that from 2022-2024, glaciers underwent their greatest three-year loss on record. Related Greenpeace ordered to pay more than €600 million to oil company over US pipeline protests Glaciers are losing more water each year than the world will consume in three decades, study warns 'Seven of the ten most negative mass balance years have occurred since 2016,' says WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, referring to the difference between the amount of ice glaciers gain through snowfall and the amount they lose through seasonal melting. This is triggering an 'avalanche of cascading impacts', the UN agency warns, from flooding to water scarcity and sea-level rise. 'Preservation of glaciers is not just an environmental, economic and societal necessity,' says Saulo, 'It's a matter of survival.' What does the depletion of 'the world's water towers' mean for people? There are more than 275,000 glaciers worldwide, covering approximately 700,000 square kilometres of ground. Alongside ice sheets , they store a whopping 70 per cent of global freshwater resources. As the WMO puts it, high mountain regions are the world's water towers. The depletion of glaciers threatens the supplies of hundreds of millions of people who live downstream and depend on the steady release of water stored over winter during the hottest and driest parts of the year. In the short term, glacier melt increases natural hazards like floods . In the longer term, glaciers are the second-largest contributor to global sea-level rise, after the warming of the ocean. They contributed 18 mm to global sea-level rise between the years 2000-2023, according to one recent study by a global consortium of hundreds of researchers called the Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (GlaMBIE). "This might not sound much, but it has a big impact: every millimetre sea-level rise exposes an additional 200,000 to 300,000 people to annual flooding,' says Zemp. GlaMBIE found that between 2000 and 2023, glaciers lost on average 5 per cent of their remaining ice. But regionally, this loss ranged from 2 per cent in the Antarctic and Subantarctic Islands to almost 40 per cent in Central Europe. Related Slovenia, Sweden, Malta: Which European citizens are most and least prepared for climate disasters? 'It made me cry': Swiss glacier photos taken 15 years apart reveal staggering loss Where are glaciers most at risk? WMO and WGMS warn that many glaciers in Western Canada and the US, Scandinavia, Central Europe, the Caucasus, New Zealand, and the Tropics are at risk of melting entirely. The 2024 hydrological year marked the third year in a row in which all 19 glacier regions experienced a net loss of mass, WMO observes. Glaciers in Scandinavia, Svalbard, and North Asia experienced their largest annual mass loss on record. South Cascade Glacier, pictured October 2020, has the longest mass-balance record within the USGS Benchmark Glacier monitoring programme. U.S. Geological Survey. Inaugurated in the International Year of Glaciers' Preservation, the first World Glacier Day (21 March) seeks to increase awareness of the vital role that glaciers, snow, and ice play in the climate system and hydrological cycle. ADVERTISEMENT One glacier is especially in the limelight today. South Cascade Glacier in the Cascade Range of Washington, US, has been chosen as the first 'Glacier of the Year' - an accolade which celebrates the majesty of these icy landscapes and the dedication of glaciologists who watch over them. 'South Cascade Glacier exemplifies both the beauty of glaciers and the long-term commitment of dedicated scientists and volunteers who have collected direct field data to quantify glacier mass change for more than six decades', says Caitlyn Florentine, co-investigator of the glacier from the US Geological Survey. It has been continuously monitored since 1952 and provides one of the longest uninterrupted records of glaciological mass balance in the Western Hemisphere.
The Guardian
28-02-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Who controls the Murdoch family trust, good pie charts and the baby boom
Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch! In this week's newsletter we have charts on the melting of glaciers around the world, how the baby boom reshaped populations in many different countries, who controls the Murdoch family trust, how Germany's economic strength became a weakness and what it looks like to run the game Pong on hundreds of browser tabs. The rise of far-right, anti-immigration parties could speed up population decline in Europe, according to an analysis of population projection data by my colleague Alex Clark in the UK. Anti-immigration politics is on the rise across the EU, as shown by the gains made by far-right parties in elections on 2024 and 2025. In this visual feature, Alex uses immigration data and population projections to show how the population of each European country would change with and without immigration. In most countries, limiting immigration would speed up population decline and result in countries becoming older on average as the number of working-age people falls relative to elderly people. NB: Other contenders for this edition's Guardian Data Highlight™ included this hand-drawn chart of Clive Palmer's political donations and this visual feature about record-breaking heat in 2024. 1. Who has a piece of the pie? A good chart about the Murdoch family trust Good pie charts are few and far between, so we knew that our discerning Crunch readers would be pleasantly surprised to see this wonderful chart from the New York Times magazine: The graphical feature makes good use of the pie chart format to show what proportion of the family trust each Murdoch family member controls, and how that might change when Lachlan Murdoch succeeds Rupert. 2. More good pie charts? What is going on It's not news that due to global heating glaciers are melting faster and more extensively than in the past. New research from the GlaMBIE (Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise) team of scientists has brought together glacier measurements from around the world and refined and analysed it to make all of the data comparable. Some of the findings are summarised in this graphic, which combines pie charts to show glacier mass loss for each glacier location, with annual changes shown as coloured bars underneath: You can read the paper, and see some more figures, here. 3. Boom, baby, boom Our World In Data has a typically excellent explainer about the postwar baby boom of the mid 1900s, which has a whole bunch of charts. This one shows that the baby boom happened in many high-income countries – and not just nations directly involved in the second world war. Sweden and Switzerland did not actively participate in the war, but they also experienced significant increases in birthrates. Sign up to The Crunch Our data journalists showcase the most important charts and dataviz from the Guardian and around the web, free every fortnight after newsletter promotion You can read more here. 4. Is the Wirtschaftswunder kaputt? This extremely stylish visual essay from Reuters looks over the economic and political history of Germany and covers how, according to Reuters: 'Germany has gone in recent years from being Europe's economic powerhouse to becoming the euro zone's growth laggard'. We loved how this feature integrated the design device of spraypaint and graffiti across all the elements – from the animated illustrations to the subtle texturing on the line charts. Visualizing all books of the world in ISBN-Space How tariffs work Chartography: collage your charts German election results (in English): Reuters, the Guardian Peter Dutton wants to cut public service jobs in Canberra. Here's what happened last time More than 80% of new California properties are in high fire-risk areas Finally a good reason to never close that browser tab you opened five years ago. Nolen Royalty, a software engineer known for a couple of other viral hits like One Million Checkboxes, has created a Pong game that runs in your browser tabs. Nolen's blog post about the project is a really interesting read. It goes through many of the problems he encountered and how he worked through them – I wish more people would write like this about their projects. Enjoying The Crunch? If you like what you see and think you might know someone else who would enjoy it, please forward this email or send them a link to the sign up page. If you have a chart tip or technical issue viewing this newsletter, please reply to this email. If you are a Guardian supporter and need assistance with regards to contributions and/or digital subscriptions, please email
Euronews
20-02-2025
- Science
- Euronews
Glaciers are losing more water each year than the world will consume in three decades, study warns
Climate change is causing glaciers around the world to melt faster than ever recorded, a new scientific study has found. These bodies of ice have shrunk by more than 5 per cent on average since 2000 - and at an accelerating rate in the past decade. Scientists have long been aware that glaciers - indicators of human-caused climate change - are melting increasingly fast. But this new study, published in the journal Nature, draws together various findings for the most comprehensive look at the issue yet. 'Regions that have had glaciers since time immemorial are losing these icons of ice,' says Tyler Sutterley, a senior research scientist in the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington. Sutterly is one of the study's authors from a global consortium of hundreds of researchers called the Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (GlaMBIE). Unprecedented glacier melt is leading to a raft of disasters, the GlaMBIE team explain, jeopardising freshwater resources for millions of people, and raising sea levels with catastrophic results. How quickly are glaciers melting? Since the turn of the century, glaciers have shed more than 6,500 billion tonnes (5 per cent) of ice - roughly 270 billion tonnes a year. To put that into perspective, lead author of the study Michael Zemp tells BBC News that 270 billion tonnes of ice is the same as the water consumption of the entire global population in 30 years, assuming each person uses three litres a day. As greenhouse gas emissions rise, the process is speeding up. Between 2000 and 2011, these frozen rivers melted at a rate of around 231 billion tonnes of ice per year on average, the team found. This melt rate increased between 2012 and 2023 to 314 billion tonnes per year, an acceleration of more than a third. 2023 saw a record loss of mass of around 548 billion tonnes. Glacier mass loss is about 18 per cent larger than the loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet and more than twice that from the Antarctic Ice Sheet, the researchers note. The Alps are losing their glaciers faster than any other region, with nearly 40 per cent gone since 2000. The Middle East, New Zealand and western North America have also suffered glacier reductions of more than 20 per cent. How has glacier melt contributed to sea level rise? The thawing of nearly 7 trillion tonnes of glacial ice since 2000 has raised sea levels by almost 2 centimetres. That makes glacier melt the second biggest contributor to sea level rise, after the expansion of water due to warming oceans, with catastrophic consequences. "Every centimetre of sea-level rise exposes another 2 million people to annual flooding somewhere on our planet," Professor Andy Shepherd, head of the Department of Geography and Environment at Northumbria University in the UK, told the BBC. Global sea levels have already risen by more than 10 cm since 1992, according to NASA, with faster increases expected in the coming decades. Due to 'baked in' climate change, glaciers will continue to melt in the years ahead even with more ambitious efforts to slow global warming, as they respond slowly to the changing climate. However, the way humans respond to the climate crisis will still have an enormous impact on their existence. Climate action could be the difference between losing a quarter of the world's glacier ice, and nearly half if business as usual continues, the study urges. "Every tenth of a degree of warming that we can avoid will save some glaciers, and will save us from a lot of damage," Prof Zemp adds.
