Between 2005 and 2015, the world lost 298 gigatonnes of ice annually from 2005 to 2019 (Image: Getty Images)
One of the most damaging consequences of global warming is melting of ice in Earth’s coldest regions. Melting is associated with a series of extreme weather events. Sea level rise, changing rain regime, storms, floods and severe droughts are punishing the planet … Researchers from ETH Zurich, in Switzerland, and the University of Toulouse in France, calculated the speed of this destruction. And the pace is high. Between 2005 and 2015, the world lost 298 gigatonnes of ice annually from 2005 to 2019. A 30% increase in the rate of decline, compared to the previous five years.
To conduct the study, the scientists used images from a special camera aboard the NASA Terra satellite, which has been orbiting the planet every 100 minutes since 1999. This device allowed the team to calculate the mass of about 220,000 glaciers in the world. He lost the world every year. Glaciers tend to accumulate ice in the winter, but the summer melting outweighs those gains.
“The situation in the Himalayas is particularly worrying,” warns Roman Hughonet, one of the study’s authors, noting also that regions of India and Bangladesh may face water stress during periods of drought, such as large rivers such as the Ganges and Indus mainly fed by glacial runoff.
Earlier this year, a team led by the University of Leeds, UK, found that melting ice in Antarctica and Greenland was among the worst-case scenarios for global average temperatures.
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