Partial photo: Chirag Saini
Almost all the world’s glaciers (around 220,000 in total) are becoming thinner and losing mass, and these changes are picking up pace. Regardless of altitude or latitude, they’ve been melting at a high rate since the mid-20th century. Glacial melt caused up to 21% of the observed rise in sea levels from 2015 to 2019. If shrinkage keeps accelerating, water or food shortages could occur in a few decades in countries like India and Bangladesh. There’s also inexorable melting of South America’s glaciers and ice fields, with Andean glaciers thinning by nearly three feet a year since 2000. This poses a threat to water supplies and agriculture from Bolivia to Chile. Because the world’s mountain glaciers are melting so rapidly, they’ve been responsible for a disproportionate share of global sea level rise in recent decades. No mountain region has lost more ice, relative to its size, than the Andes.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210429095154.htm
https://e360.yale.edu/features/andes-meltdown-new-insights-into-rapidly-retreating-glaciers
www.cnn.com/2021/04/29/weather/glacier-melt-faster-rate-scn/index.html