Glacier ice on the mountaintop now covers significantly less area in the tropical region compared to 50 years ago. The change has been linked to rising global temperatures, according to a latest study.
The study was published in the journal Global and Planetary Change—a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal. Researchers found that a glacier near Puncak Jaya, in Papua New Guinea, lost about 93% of its ice over a 38-year period from 1980 to 2018. In another instance between 1986 and 2017 the area covered by glaciers on top of Kilimanjaro in Africa decreased by nearly 71%.
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This is the first such study to combine NASA satellite imagery with data from ice cores drilled during field expeditions on tropical glaciers around the world. That combination shows that climate change is causing these glaciers, which have long been sources of water for nearby communities, to disappear and indicates that those glaciers have lost ice more quickly in recent years.
“These are in the most remote parts of our planet—they’re not next to big cities, so you don’t have a local pollution effect,” Lonnie Thompson, professor of Earth Sciences at the Ohio State University and senior research scientist at Ohio State’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. “These glaciers are sentinels, they’re early warning systems for the planet, and they all are saying the same thing,” added Thompson who led the study.
Source: Forbes
