The loss rate increased from 0.8 trillion tonnes per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tonnes per year by 2017, with potentially disastrous consequences.
The rate at which ice is disappearing around the world is in line with “worst-case global warming scenarios,” scientists in the UK have warned in new research.
A team from the universities of Edinburgh, Leeds and University College London said that the speed with which ice melts in the polar regions and mountains of the world has increased significantly in the last 30 years.
Using satellite data, experts found that the Earth lost 28 billion tons of ice between 1994 and 2017.
The loss rate increased from 0.8 trillion tons per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tons per year by 2017, with potentially disastrous consequences for people living in coastal areas, they said.
“The ice sheets are now following the most unfavorable global warming scenarios set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” said Thomas Slater, a researcher at Leeds University’s Center for Polar Observation and Modeling.
“Sea level rise at this scale will have a very serious impact on coastal communities in this century.”
The United Nations IPCC contribution has been instrumental in shaping international climate change strategies, including the 2015 Paris Agreement, according to which most greenhouse gas emitting countries have agreed to take steps to mitigate the effect of global warming. .
University research, published in the journal The Cryosphere of the European Union of Geological Sciences, was the first of its kind to use satellite data.
He studied 215,000 mountain glaciers around the world, polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, ice shelves floating around Antarctica and sea ice heading into the Arctic and southern oceans.
Arctic losses, Antarctica
The survey found that the largest losses in the last three decades were caused by ice shelves in the Arctic and Antarctic, both floating in the polar oceans.
While such an ice loss does not directly contribute to sea level rise, its destruction stops ice sheets that reflect solar radiation and thus indirectly contributes to sea level rise.
“As sea ice shrinks, more solar energy is absorbed by the oceans and atmosphere, causing the Arctic to heat up faster than anywhere else on the planet,” said Isobel Lawrence., a 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 that cause sea levels to rise,” she added.
A previous study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States estimated that global sea levels could rise by 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 will warm by more than five degrees Celsius (nine degrees Fahrenheit), causing the water to rise, displacing millions of people living in coastal areas.
Another study, published in 2019 by Climate Central in the US, said that up to 300 million people could be affected by devastating floods by 2050, about three times more than previously estimated. The number could increase to 630 million by 2100.
The study warned that key coastal cities, such as Mumbai in India, Shanghai in China and Bangkok in Thailand, could sink in the next 30 years.
An estimated 237 million people threatened by rising seawater live in Asia alone, research shows.