The loss rate rose from 0.8 trillion tons per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tons per year by 2017, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
The rate at which ice is disappearing around the world matches “worst-case climate warming conditions”, UK scientists have warned in new research.
A team from the universities of Edinburgh, Leeds and University College London said the rate at which ice is melting across the world’s pole and mountain regions has risen dramatically in the last 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 tonnes per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tonnes per year by 2017, with potentially catastrophic consequences for people living in coastal areas, they said.
“The ice sheets now follow the worst-case climate warming conditions imposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” said Thomas Slater, a researcher at the Center for Observation and Modeling. Polar University of Leeds.
“Rising sea levels on this scale will have a devastating effect on coastal communities in this century.”
Submission from the United Nations IPCC has been instrumental in shaping international climate change strategies, including the 2015 Paris Agreement under which the majority of greenhouse gas emitting countries take steps to mitigate the effects of global warming.
The university research, published in the journal European Geoscience Union The Cryosphere, was the first of its kind to use satellite data.
It surveyed 215,000 glaciers worldwide, polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, ice shelves floating around Antarctica and moving sea ice in the Arctic and Southern oceans.
Loss in Arctic, Antarctica
The study found that the biggest losses in the last three decades were from Arctic Sea ice and Antarctic ice shelves, both of which sailed the pole seas.
While this ice loss does not directly contribute to sea level rise, its destruction prevents the ice sheets from reflecting the sun’s radiation and thus indirectly contributes to rising sea levels. .
“As sea ice erodes, more of the sun’s energy is being absorbed by the oceans and atmosphere, causing the Arctic to warm faster than anywhere else on the planet,” he said. Isobel Lawrence, is a researcher 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 that cause sea levels to rise,” she said.
An earlier study published in the journal Proceedings of the US-based National Academy of Sciences estimated that global sea levels could rise by two meters (6.5 feet) by the end of this century due to global warming. and greenhouse emissions.
The report also said that, in the worst case scenario, global temperatures would warm by more than five degrees Celsius (nine degrees Fahrenheit), causing the rain to rise, destroying millions of people living in coastal areas.
Another study, published in 2019 by the US-based Climate Central, said that by 2050, severe flooding could affect up to 300 million people, by about three times more than previously thought. The number could rise to 630 million by 2100.
The study warned that major coastal cities such as Mumbai India, Shanghai China and Bangkok in Thailand could go under water over the next 30 years.
An estimated 237 million people at risk from rising sea waters live in Asia alone, the study said.