The loss rate went from 0.8 trillion tonnes a year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tonnes a year in 2017, with potentially disastrous consequences.
British scientists have warned in new research that the speed with which ice is disappearing around the world coincides with the “worst-case scenario of global warming.”
A team from the universities of Edinburgh, Leeds and University College London said the rate at which ice melts in the polar and mountainous regions of the world has increased markedly in the last 30 years.
Using satellite data, experts found that the Earth lost 28 trillion tons of ice between 1994 and 2017.
The loss rate has gone from 0.8 trillion tonnes a year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tonnes a year in 2017, with potentially disastrous consequences for people living in coastal areas, they said. .
“The ice sheets now follow the worst global warming scenarios set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” said Thomas Slater, a researcher at the University of Leeds’s Polar Observation and Modeling Center.
“Sea level rise on this scale will have very serious impacts on coastal communities this century.”
United Nations IPCC contributions have been instrumental in shaping international strategies against climate change, including the 2015 Paris Agreement under which most greenhouse gas emitting countries agreed to take action to address climate change. mitigate the effect of global warming.
The university research, published in the journal The Cryosphere of the European Geosciences Union, was the first of its kind to use satellite data.
It examined 215,000 mountain glaciers worldwide, layers of polar ice in Greenland and Antarctica, ice shelves floating around Antarctica, and sea ice adrift in the Arctic Ocean and the South.
Losses in Arctic, Antarctic
The survey found that the largest losses in the last three decades were due to the ice shelves of the Arctic and Antarctic seas, which float in the two polar oceans.
Although this loss of ice does not directly contribute to rising sea levels, its destruction prevents ice sheets from reflecting solar radiation and therefore indirectly contributing to rising sea levels.
“As sea ice shrinks, the oceans and atmosphere absorb more solar energy, causing the Arctic to heat up faster than anywhere else on the planet,” said Isobel Lawrence, researcher at the University of Leeds
“This not only accelerates the melting of sea ice, but also exacerbates the melting of glaciers and ice sheets which causes sea level to rise,” he added.
A previous study published in the journal Proceedings of the U.S.-based National Academy of Sciences estimated that global sea levels could rise two meters (6.5 feet) by the end of this century due to global warming. and greenhouse gas emissions.
The report also said that in the worst case, global temperatures would warm by more than five degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit), causing water to rise and displacing millions of people living in the areas. coastal.
Another study, published in 2019 by U.S.-based Climate Central, said up to 300 million people could be affected by devastating floods in 2050, about three times more than previously estimated. The number could reach 630 million by 2100.
The study warned that key coastal cities, such as Mumbai India, Shanghai China and Thailand Bangkok, could sink for the next 30 years.
An estimated 237 million people in Asia are threatened by rising seawater, according to research.