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Earth Communications

Satellites Show World's Glaciers Melting Faster Than Ever (nbcnews.com) 108

The vast majority of the world's mountain glaciers are losing 31 percent more snow and ice per year than they did 15 years earlier, according to 3D satellite measurements. Scientists blame human-caused climate change. NBC News reports: Using 20 years of recently declassified satellite data, scientists calculated that the world's 220,000 mountain glaciers are losing more than 328 billion tons (298 billion metric tons) of ice and snow per year since 2015, according to a study in Wednesday's journal Nature. That's enough melt flowing into the world's rising oceans to put Switzerland under almost 24 feet (7.2 meters) of water each year.

The annual melt rate from 2015 to 2019 is 78 billion more tons (71 billion metric tons) a year than it was from 2000 to 2004. Global thinning rates, different than volume of water lost, doubled in the last 20 years and "that's enormous," said Romain Hugonnet, a glaciologist at ETH Zurich and the University of Toulouse in France who led the study. Half the world's glacial loss is coming from the United States and Canada. Alaska's melt rates are "among the highest on the planet," with the Columbia glacier retreating about 115 feet (35 meters) a year, Hugonnet said.

Almost all the world's glaciers are melting, even ones in Tibet that used to be stable, the study found. Except for a few in Iceland and Scandinavia that are fed by increased precipitation, the melt rates are accelerating around the world. The near-uniform melting "mirrors the global increase in temperature" and is from the burning of coal, oil and gas, Hugonnet said. Some smaller glaciers are disappearing entirely.

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Satellites Show World's Glaciers Melting Faster Than Ever

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  • Um, the lowest point in Switzerland is still 200M above sea level, so, no, it's not melting that much or the Empire State Building would be halfway underwater already.

    • You misunderstand.

      They have invented a new measure of water volume: instead of acre-feet, it's Switzerland-feet.

    • I think they mean it would be 24 feet deep if all the worldwide melt-off was confined to the borders of Switzerland (and presumably maintained a uniform depth over the mountains rather than pooling in the lowlands)

      Which is a fairly stupid reference point by any objective standard, but is the sort of thing people come up with when trying to translate big numbers into something the human mind can kind of visualize. I would presume the research team was Swiss, and the comparison just got dragged along into co

    • by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 ) on Thursday April 29, 2021 @01:07AM (#61326716)

      Some quick work with a calculator shows that what they were trying to say was "raises sea level almost 0.6 millimeters per year".

      Alas, fractional millimeters per year increase don't sound nearly as scary as "24 feet per year". So they had to find some convenient area that would be recognizable (Switzerland is a whole country!!!!) to make the number scarier....

  • by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Wednesday April 28, 2021 @10:14PM (#61326418) Homepage Journal

    "Using 20 years of recently declassified satellite data"

    Why did satellite data on glaciers need to be kept secret for 20 years?
    How exactly did that benefit humanity?

    • Why did satellite data on glaciers need to be kept secret for 20 years?

      Sat pics are one way they spot (Russian, Chinese, etc.) submarines that surface. The time frame is just a safety precaution for related actions.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Probably at the time they were classified we didn't want other countries to know how detailed it was.

    • Why did satellite data on glaciers need to be kept secret for 20 years?

      Presumably it was a military satellite, and they didn't want the other side(s) to know how good a picture we could get with whichever satellite it was....

    • The data from the ERS-1 mission was declassified 3 months after the mission was completed, in June 1995. The journalist writing the article seems to have glossed over that bit.

      Data from ENVISat and CryoSat 2 were never classified by the US, as they are ESA satellites. The data from ICESat and GRACE seems to have always been public.

      None of this was kept secret for 20 years.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
  • by Anonymous Coward

    I can't wait to surf the new, warm, inland waters.

  • by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Thursday April 29, 2021 @01:09AM (#61326720)

    This is a problem. That man is having a global negative impact on the environment, especially by taking hundreds of millions of years worth of carbon out of the depths of the earth and putting it into the atmosphere has been common knowledge since the 1950ies. Strict course of action was pressingly due in the 70ies. 45 years later and we are still dragging our heels on this problem. Modern civilization is at stake and we're still slow-poking about. Make no mistake: A negative impact is ramping up. The ship of keeping nature as it was has sailed. However, I still would like the knowledge and the good parts of civilization we've gained to survive. But if fumbling about keeps going on any longer they won't. And that outlook saddens me.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 )

      The Disease of Greed, has ravaged mankind for thousands of years. Putting humans above nature, is hardly a new concept. We knew how deadly atomic bombs were before we even dropped the first one. And yet we still proceeded with decades of nuclear testing, and living with the effects of it today.

      Greed continues to ravage this planet, in the worst ways. Refusing to tear down the patented walls of vaccine Greed in order to help a dying planet is a prime example, and another example of the kind of mass ignor

      • Greed continues to ravage this planet, in the worst ways.

        If by 'ravage' you mean created the most peaceful and prosperous society humanity has ever known? Maybe stop watching the news. That glass half empty view of everything all the time will fry your brain.

    • Too many people can barely spell science never mind understand the role of CO2 as an IR absorber in the atmosphere or the dangers of overpopulation. Even worse, plenty of those who do understand don't want to make any meangingful change to their way of life because they won't be around to suffer the consequences as most of them are middle aged or older. You'd think they'd care about what awaits their kids or grandkids but it would appear not. But short termism is human nature and you can't change the opinio

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by argStyopa ( 232550 )

      Of course, simple pictures of glaciers melting over time proves NOTHING about causation.

      The paleoclimate record shows that the earth has seen sudden spikes of CO2 and warmth about every 120,000 years. The last one was ...a little more than 120,000 years ago, so we're due. /In my view it's almost certain that humans have made it worse,/ but it's irrefutable that the BULK of the change is cyclic and not anthropogenic. If anything, what we're seeing is a snap-forward after the warming was delayed for a coupl

      • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        But we know why those spikes of CO2 happen - it's due to orbital variations. It was proposed as an explanation in the 1920s and sufficiently detailed information to confirm became available in the 1960s. The problem for your 'theories' is given the current orbital variations a spike of CO2 is the last thing we should be seeing.
        • Really?
          Because the paleoclimate cycle shows pretty clearly spikes every 120k years - for at least the last several MILLION years.

          (wiki link to paleotemps chart omitted because 'somehow' /. every time I post it, says it looks like ascii art and refuses to post)

          And if you notice, in the pleistocene that they were actually INCREASING in intensity - for all the panty-wetting about how terrible warming is, I find it curious that we haven't even come close to hitting the Eemian peak values (when hippos wallowed h

          • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

            Really? Because the paleoclimate cycle shows pretty clearly spikes every 120k years - for at least the last several MILLION years.

            Read about Milankovitch cycles. There are actually multiple cycles superimposed due to various types of orbital effect. They are not necessarily every 120,000 years of the same significance because of the different periodicities of the cycles grouped under the Milankovitch banner.

            Again, the broad cooling effect of particulates is WELL understood - better than CO2 science, certainly.

            The cooling effects of particulates is not perfectly understood as the effects on cloud formation are still a subject of debate, and that has a significant effect on climate. And that includes where the clouds are formed (altitude,

            • Of course I'd referenced a SPECIFIC graph you could have looked up and seen what I'm talking about, but you didn't bother, did you?

              Yes, I know what Milankovich cycles are. But if you actually look at that graph you'll see the cyclic spikes I'm talking about.

              And we're DUE for one. Late, actually.

              • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

                Yes, I know what Milankovich cycles are. But if you actually look at that graph you'll see the cyclic spikes I'm talking about.

                And we're DUE for one. Late, actually.

                The classic 1980 paper suggested cooling for some thousands of years more. More recent work has suggested that this is incorrect and there may be an increase in insolation. But even if this is correct, it's gradually over a period of 25,000 years and in no way accounts for the rapid increase seen over the last 200. What mechanism do you suggest does account for the increase in temperature? It can't be insolation (Milankovitch cycles).

                • Is that the same 1980 paper that suggested we were moving into an ice age, or some other?

                  You like to use the term Milankovitch cycles, did you ever look at the graph i'd recommended?

                  And I've already hypothesized that the rapid increase in temperature could be the 'snapback' from successful efforts (in the 1970s and 1980s - when did the sudden warming start again?) to clear the planet of heavy particulate pollution present for the entirety of the Industrial age, which had been (you know, "physics") significa

          • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

            Seems like it's right about time now to warm up.

            Again, you need to look at the periodicities of the various cycles. If you look at the underlying periodicities and cycles then this is not what we should be expecting. We should be expecting continued cooling as over the last 8000 years. Yes, ultimately there will be warming, but we should actually be continuing towards another ice age in (from memory) about another 8000 years.

            • That's ridiculous.

              We're coming out of an ICE AGE.
              Of course we're warming.

              • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

                That's ridiculous.

                We're coming out of an ICE AGE. Of course we're warming.

                We came out of the icier part of an ice age, but we are still within an ice age, and it has been cooling for the last 8000 years. Please do some more research using reputable, scientific sources.

                See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], and notice

                The Holocene Climate Optimum (HCO) was a warm period during roughly the interval 9,000 to 5,000 years BP, with a thermal maximum around 8000 years BP. It has also been known by many other names, such as Altithermal, Climatic Optimum, Holocene Megathermal, Holocene Optimum, Holocene Thermal Maximum, Hypsithermal, and Mid-Holocene Warm Period.

                .

                Note that the thermal maximum was 8000 years ago.

                Yes, it's Wikipedia, but I am not going to spend time looking up references in more detail right now, as I don't keep a detailed bibliography for this to hand. Do your own research.

          • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
            Just because A can cause B does not mean that all causes of B are A.
            • And correlation doesn't prove causation. That's literally the entire argument of the global warmingists - it's warming, we're here, we MUST be the cause!

              D'oh.

              Care to do more "dueling cliches"?

              • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

                And correlation doesn't prove causation.

                No, it's through the known mechanisms and physics. If you want to argue that CO2 has not impacted climate you need to indicate how a known greenhouse gas is not having the effect that you would expect it to have and indicate what other mechanism is causing a rapid increase in temperature.

                That's literally the entire argument of the global warmingists

                No, just physics.

                • Who said CO2 has "no impact" on climate?

                  If you invent strawmen, of course your point seems rational.

    • Strict course of action was pressingly due in the 70ies.

      In the 70's we were on a 40 year cooling streak remember and headed for the next ice age? Now we're on a warming streak and now we're headed for heat death. It's almost like weather/climate has become a new religion

      Modern civilization is at stake and we're still slow-poking about. Make no mistake: A negative impact is ramping up.

      That sounds scary. How much extra tax would you like me to pay to make the scary thing go away?

  • I grew up in NZ, famous for some of its glaciers on the West Coast of the South Island where I lived, and I visited them frequently - I'm over 50 now.

    The growth and recession of the glaciers fascinated me as a kid. Indeed for many years at a lookout at the base of the Franz Josef glacier there was a set of photos and drawings over many years, since the mid 1800's showing the glacier. It fascinated me that the glacier could recede and grow. It showed that in some decades the glacier would be right forward al

    • by dargaud ( 518470 )
      Well, yes, advance of a glacial front does not depend only on the temperature, but also: how much snow it gets in winter (more mass), how much rain in summer (slides down better) and more. In a place like NZ (which I visited and loved), those secondary effects are dominant with respect to the temperature, hence the important fluctuations. In other places like Tibet, a receding glacier is bad news.
    • by bertd ( 53884 )

      Glaciers are a 3d structure. It is volume of ice that matters, not surface area. Satellite photos provide 2d data, which has to be interpreted through a model to estimate volume. It would be much better to have direct measurement of ice volume. So NASA developed the GRACE satellites, which use gravity anomalies to measure the mass of the ice in glaciers.

      Sadly, for the fearmongers, the data did not support their message. GRACE showed that total volume of glacial ice is stable.

      So the GRACE data is being

    • by Whibla ( 210729 )

      Google has posted photography over a 37 year period recently as if it means something. As if a 37 year period means anything in the millions of years of history of this world.

      Well, 37 years is a bit more of a human timescale. Since we're all human it makes sense to use relatable numbers. It also 'makes sense' to use the data they actually have - if they were posting pictures of the glacier from a thousand years ago I suspect most people would call shenanigans.

      No amount of mental anguish that some folks inflict on themselves is going to make a difference in the ultimate destiny of this beautiful world. Enjoy it, humans are mere fleas on the surface of this wonderful place, we may wipe ourselves out like any other extinct species, but our ultimate effect on this world is zero. The planet will flick us off like a flea and carry on.

      Your nihilism is showing. My sympathies for whatever mental anguish you're seemingly experiencing.

      As to the ultimate fate of the planet, the Sun will have the final say in that. However, (I assume) most of us feel that alth

    • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
      The records that exist of those glaciers, along with modelling, show an overall downward trend over a much longer period that 37 years. Those that were not recorded photographically over those longer periods are not as well captured, which is why more extensive (in geographical terms) data is sometimes more limited in timescale, However, archaeology, geology and other sciences give us good information over the whole globe over a scale of thousands and millions of years, just not always with human-scale gran
      • The records that exist of those glaciers, along with modelling,

        How about without the modeling? You'll excuse me if I don't take a guess as seriously as hard data.

        • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

          How about without the modeling?

          By modelling I meant modelling of volume. Perhaps calculation of volume at any given point in time would be more accurate a term.

          You'll excuse me if I don't take a guess as seriously as hard data.

          Huge amounts of what we rely on today is a result of modelling, and it can be very successful. It seems to be used as a pejorative often only when the results challenge vested interests people may have.

          • Huge amounts of what we rely on today is a result of modelling, and it can be very successful.

            Yeah, when a model accurately predict outcomes it has use. And when it doesn't...

            It seems to be used as a pejorative often only when the results challenge vested interests people may have.

            It seems to be used as the unquestionable truth by those with an 'vested interests'. When did asking questions become 'unscientific'?

    • by SoftwareArtist ( 1472499 ) on Thursday April 29, 2021 @12:56PM (#61328470)

      You're proposing a hypothesis: that all glaciers grow and shrink in a regular cycle, and what we're seeing is just part of that cycle, not related to global climate change. Let's test that hypothesis by making predictions based on it, then comparing the predictions to data.

      If your hypothesis is correct, we would predict there shouldn't be any global pattern. If this isn't caused by global climate change, there's no reason to expect correlation between glaciers in distant places.

      If your hypothesis is correct, we shouldn't see any long term trends. In any decade glaciers might grow or shrink, but over several decades it should all average out.

      If your hypothesis is correct, we shouldn't see any correlation with rising global temperatures. On average, glaciers shouldn't be shrinking today any faster than they were a few decades ago.

      Lets compare those predictions to the data.

      The first one is totally wrong. As the summary says, "Almost all the world's glaciers are melting, even ones in Tibet that used to be stable, the study found." This is a global pattern.

      The second one is totally wrong. Check out the graph at https://nsidc.org/glims/glacie... [nsidc.org]. World glacier mass has decreased almost every year since 1960.

      The third one is totally wrong. You can see from that graph that the rate of mass loss increased about 30 years ago. Since then it has increased even more. As the summary says, "The vast majority of the world's mountain glaciers are losing 31 percent more snow and ice per year than they did 15 years earlier."

      Every one of the predictions from your hypothesis is wrong. Therefore the hypothesis is wrong. That isn't an opinion. It's fact. This is how science works.

      • I haven't read your reply. I got as far as "You proposed a hypothesis".

        The photographs and drawings are not a hypothesis / figment of my imagination that I made up. Folk took those photographs and made those drawings. That makes them a fact!!

        I don't need to blather on for paragraphs to make it so, and I don't care that I do or don't have to prove it to you - you agreeing or disagreeing with me doesn't matter to me at all! I know what the actual fact is!! I have a distinct advantage in that I have been arou

        • So you didn't bother to read anything I said. You didn't even read far enough to see what hypothesis I said you were proposing. But you still felt a need to reply (why?) to say you know more than me (though you didn't read far enough to find out what I do or don't know) and that everything I said was wrong (though you have no clue what I said).

          Do you see a flaw in your reasoning?

          Try reading what I actually said. You might learn something.

          • I don't care what hypothesis you say I am proposing. I know what the fact is.

            I don't care what you said. I already know what the fact is. You appear to be trying to prove or disprove a fact I know.

            I don't care whether you do or don't, I already know it to be a fact.

            What you say is irrelevant.

            • Why do you keep replying to a message you haven't read? I'm honestly curious. It seems a strange thing to do.

              Everything you've said is a non-sequitur. It's unrelated to what I said in my post. If you had read it, you would know that. Instead you keep replying to an imaginary post that I didn't write, but that you somehow convinced yourself must be what I wrote.

              How can you claim to "know what the fact is" when you haven't even read my post to find out what we're talking about?

              • I do it for fun!

                I have taken the time to read your post, it was as expected.

                I enjoy watching people proposing that a point I have made is hypothetical, when I know it is factual and evidence exists to prove it! It means that there are errors in their reasoning, and I enjoy watching them posting screeds of supposedly factual information in an authoritative manner, trying to justify their opinion. I may have a sadistic streak about this!

                Please carry on.

                • Ok, go for it! Please present your evidence that contradicts my arguments, and point out the errors in my reasoning. I'm always open to learning more about a subject.

                  The only evidence you've presented so far is that you saw drawings of one glacier when you were young. That doesn't really demonstrate anything at all. It certainly doesn't contradict the fact that for the last few decades, almost every glacier on earth has been shrinking, and the rate of shrinking is accelerating. So if you "know" that's

                  • No I don't have to present anything!

                    Please see my earlier post, I'm not interested in convincing you or indeed anyone else of the facts of the matter. Trying to convince anyone of anything online is a waste of time, I just don't care what you think.

                    I posted my observation which I know to be factual, I don't give a rats about convincing anyone of it, I don't sit here trying to gather internet points or karma or whatever, I don't make a career of being an internet activist.

                    Thanks.

      • You have your facts, the other guy has his opinion. Nothing you say will change his opinion, because it's his. Now that's democracy! (Would actually be funny if the line of thinking wouldn't be quite so generally accepted...)
      • If your hypothesis is correct, we would predict there shouldn't be any global pattern. If this isn't caused by global climate change, there's no reason to expect correlation between glaciers in distant places.

        Looked at their data [nature.com]. There is no pattern, or even correlation to pollution or to CO2. They did a lot of funny math to make it look like it does but it's remarkably constant and not variable. Take the Alaska data from 41586_2021_3436_MOESM4_ESM.xlsx for their first figure. You can take the area to get the percentage change each year and you get about 0.489% which very minimal variation after 4 decimals and only 8 unique values when there should be 19 or 20 if you want to include the first year which would b

  • At least we were warned.
    • Your grandchildren will suffer for your failures. Some of them will die prematurely or unnecessarily painfully for those failures.
  • An interesting side effect of the COVID pandemic is the slowing of glacier melt and increase in Earth's albedo effect [cgtn.com].

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