World's Glaciers Are Melting Faster Today Than Any Time in History

The world's glaciers are losing ice at a faster pace so far this century than at any time since record-keeping began more than 120 years ago, according to a new study that says glacial melt is a worldwide phenomenon and will continue even if the world stopped warming any further than it already has.

In the study, published last month in the Journal of Glaciology and conducted by the World Glacier Monitoring Service at the University of Zurich, scientists compared observations of tens of thousands of glaciers around the world with all other data available on the world's glaciers.

They used everything from satellite images and photographs taken on the ground and from the air, to drawings and lithographs made back in the 19th century and earlier. All together, the evidence paints a remarkably consistent picture of what's happening to ice around the world.

"The observed glaciers currently lose between half a metre and one metre [about 1 1/2 to 3 feet] of its ice thickness every year – this is two to three times more than the corresponding average of the 20th century," said Michael Zemp, Director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service and the study's lead author, in a statement.

That's the equivalent of "about three times the ice volume stored in the entirety of the European Alps every year," Zemp told the Huffington Post, adding that the current rate of ice loss is twice as fast as the 1990s and three times as fast as the 1980s.

Case in point: The Rhone Glacier in the Swiss Alps near Valais, Switzerland, shown in the two photographs below. The first photo shows the state of the glacier in June 2007:

While some glaciers around the world have advanced over the past few decades, the study says, these cases "are restricted to a subset of glaciers" and what advance has occurred hasn't come close to recovering what has been lost since the 19th century.

The study comes on the heels of news back in March that Antarctica's glaciers are melting faster than scientists had previously known -- enough to fill 1.3 million Olympic-size swimming polls every year -- and that the world's oceans could rise much faster this century than previously expected.

Zemp says he encourages people to visit the world's glaciers so they can see for themselves how quickly they're disappearing. "I always say to people, 'Go take your children and sit in front of the glacier and take a picture, then go back every year," he told the Huffington Post. "It reminds you of what you could lose."

Read the full study at the Journal of Glaciology.

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