The loss rate has increased from 0.8 trillion tons per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tons per year in 2017, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
The rate at which ice disappears around the world is consistent with “worst-case climate warming scenarios,” British scientists warn in new research.
A team from the universities of Edinburgh, Leeds and University College London said the rate of ice melting in the world’s polar regions and mountains has increased significantly over the past 30 years.
Using satellite data, the experts found that the Earth lost 28 trillion tons of ice between 1994 and 2017.
The loss rate has risen from 0.8 trillion tons per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tons per year in 2017, with potentially disastrous consequences for people living in coastal areas, they said.
“The ice sheets are now following the worst climate warming scenarios set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” said Thomas Slater, a research fellow at Leeds University’s Center for Polar Observation and Modeling.
“Sea level rise on this scale will have very serious consequences for coastal communities this century.”
The input of the United Nations IPCC has been critical in shaping international climate change strategies, including the 2015 Paris Agreement, in which the majority of countries emitting greenhouse gases agreed to take measures to mitigate the impact of global warming. of the earth.
The universities’ research, published in the European Geosciences Union’s journal The Cryosphere, was the first of its kind to use satellite data.
It examined 215,000 mountain glaciers around the world, polar ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica, ice shelves drifting around Antarctica, and sea ice drifting in the Arctic and Southern Oceans.
Losses in Artic, Antarctica
The study found that the greatest losses in the past three decades were due to Arctic Sea ice and Antarctic ice shelves, both of which float on the polar oceans.
While such ice loss does not directly contribute to sea rise, its destruction stops the ice sheets that reflect solar radiation and thus indirectly contributes to sea level rise.
“As sea ice shrinks, more solar energy is being absorbed by the oceans and atmosphere, causing the Arctic to warm faster than anywhere else in the world,” said Isobel Lawrence, a research fellow at the University of Leeds
“Not only does this accelerate the melting of sea ice, it also exacerbates the melting of glaciers and ice sheets, which are raising sea levels,” she added.
A previous study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States estimated that global sea levels could rise by two meters by the end of this century due to global warming and greenhouse gas emissions.
The report also said that in the worst-case scenario, global temperatures would warm by more than five degrees Celsius (nine degrees Fahrenheit), raising the water and displacing millions of people in coastal areas.
Another study, published in 2019 by US-based Climate Central, said that up to 300 million people could be affected by devastating floods by 2050, about three times more than previously estimated. The number could reach 630 million by 2100.
The study warned that major coastal cities such as Mumbai in India, Shanghai in China and Bangkok in Thailand could be flooded in the next 30 years.
According to the study, an estimated 237 million people live in Asia alone who are threatened by rising seawater.