The Earth is losing ice faster today than it did in the mid – 1990s, a study suggests

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Earth’s ice is melting faster today than it did in the mid-1990s, a new study suggests, as climate change pushes global temperatures ever more height.

In total, about 28 trillion metric tons of ice have melted away from the world’s sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers since the mid-1990s. Each year, the melting rate is now about 57 percent faster than it was three decades ago, scientists report in a study published Monday in the journal The Cryosphere.

“It was surprising to see such a huge increase in just 30 years,” said co-author Thomas Slater, a British geologist at the University of Leeds.

While the situation is clear for those who rely on mountain glaciers for drinking water, or relying on winter sea ice to protect coastal homes from storms, the melting of the world’s ice is beginning to attract attention. far from frozen regions, Slater noted.

As well as being captivated by the beauty of the polar regions, “people recognize that even though the ice is far away, they will feel the effects of the melting,” he said.

The melting of land ice – on Antarctica, Greenland and mountain glaciers – added enough water to the ocean in the three-year period to raise the average sea level by 3.5 centimeters. Ice loss from mountain glaciers accounted for 22 percent of the annual ice loss amounts, which is notable given that it makes up only about 1 percent of the land area, Slater said. .

Across the Arctic, sea ice is also declining to new levels in summer. Last year saw the second lowest sea ice level in more than 40 years of satellite research. As sea ice disappears, it reveals dark water that traps the sun ‘s radiation, rather than reflecting it back out of the atmosphere. This phenomenon, known as Arctic expansion, boosts regional temperatures even further.

Global atmospheric temperatures have risen by about 1.1 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. But in the Arctic, the warming rate has more than doubled the global average over the last 30 years.

Using 1994–2017 satellite data, site measurements and some computer simulations, a team of British scientists estimated that the world lost an average of 0.8 trillion metric tons of ice each year in the 1990s, but around 1.2 trillion metric tons per year in recent years. .

Measuring even the total loss of ice from the world’s glaciers, ice sheets and polar oceans is “a very interesting technique, and much needed,” said geologist Gabriel Wolken with the Alaska Region of Geological and Geophysical Studies. Wolken co-authored the Arctic 2020 Report Card released in December, but was not involved in the new study.

In Alaska, people are “very conscious” of the loss of glacial ice, Wolken said. “You can see the changes with the human eye.”

Research scientist Julienne Stroeve from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado noted that the study did not cover snow cover over land, “which also has strong albedo feedback” , referring to a measure of the reflectiveness of a surface.

The research also did not consider river or lake ice or climate, except to say that “these elements of the cryosphere have changed dramatically over the last few decades.”