Record Glacier
Thinning Means No Time to Waste on Agreeing
New International Climate Regime
Zurich/Nairobi, 16 March 2008 - The world's
glaciers are continuing to melt away with
the latest official figures showing record
losses, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
announced today.
Data from close to 30
reference glaciers in nine mountain ranges
indicate that between the years 2004-2005
and 2005-2006 the average rate of melting
and thinning more than doubled.
The findings come from
the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS),
a centre based at the University of Zurich
in Switzerland and that is supported by
UNEP.
It has been tracking
the fate of glaciers for over a century.
Continuous data series of annual mass balance,
expressed as thickness change, are available
for 30 reference glaciers since 1980.
Prof. Dr. Wilfried Haeberli,
Director of the Service said: "The
latest figures are part of what appears
to be an accelerating trend with no apparent
end in sight".
The Service calculates
thickening and thinning of glaciers in terms
of 'water equivalent'. The estimates for
the year 2006 indicate that further shrinking
took place equal to around 1.4 metres of
water equivalent compared to losses of half
a metre in 2005.
"This continues
the trend in accelerated ice loss during
the past two and a half decades and brings
the total loss since 1980 to more than 10.5
metres of water equivalent," said Professor
Haberli. During 1980-1999, average loss
rates had been 0.3 metres per year. Since
the turn of the millennium, this rate had
increased to about half a metre per year.
The record loss during
these two decades – 0.7 metres in 1998 –
has now been exceeded by three out of the
past six years: 2003, 2004 and 2006.
On average, one metre
water equivalent corresponds to 1.1 metres
in ice thickness indicating a further shrinking
in 2006 of 1.5 actual metres and since 1980
a total reduction in thickness of ice of
just over 11.5 metres or almost 38 feet.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary
General and UNEP Executive Director, said:
"
"Millions if not
billions of people depend directly or indirectly
on these natural water storage facilities
for drinking water, agriculture, industry
and power generation during key parts of
the year," said Mr Steiner.
"There are many canaries emerging in
the climate change coal mine. The glaciers
are perhaps among those making the most
noise and it is absolutely essential that
everyone sits up and takes notice,"
he said.
"To an important
and significant extent that is already happening—indeed
the elements of a Green Economy are already
emerging from the more than $100 billion
being invested in renewable energies to
the responsible investment principles endorsed
by 300 financial institutions with $13 trillion-worth
of assets," said Mr Steiner.
"The litmus test
will come in late 2009 at the climate convention
meeting in Copenhagen. Here governments
must agree on a decisive new emissions reduction
and adaptation-focused regime. Otherwise,
and like the glaciers, our room for man
oeuvre and the opportunity to act may simply
melt away," he added.
The WGMS findings also
contain figures from around 100 glaciers,
of which 30 form the core assessment, found
in Antarctica, Asia, Europe, North America,
Latin America and the Pacific.
Some of the most dramatic
shrinking has taken place in Europe with
Norway's Breidalblikkbrea glacier thinning
by close to 3.1 metres (2.9 metre water
equivalent) during 2006 compared with a
thinning of 0.3 metres (0.28 metres water
equivalent) in the year 2005.
Other dramatic shrinking
has been registered at Austria's Grosser
Goldbergkees glacier, 1.2 metres in 2006
versus 0.3 in 2005; France's Ossoue glacier,
nearly 3 metres versus around 2.7 metres
in 2005; Italy's Malavalle glacier 1.4 metres
versus around 0.9 metres in 2005; Spain's
Maladeta glacier, nearly 2 metres versus
1.6 metres in 2005; Sweden's Storglaciaeren
glacier, 1.8 metres versus close to 0.080
metres in 2005 and Switzerland's Findelen
glacier, 1.3 metres versus 0.22 metres in
2005.
Not all of the close
to 100 glaciers monitored posted losses
with some thickening during the same period
including Chile's Echaurren Norte glacier
while others, such as Bolivia's Chacaltaya
glacier; Canada's Place glacier; India's
Hamtah glacier and the Daniels and Yawning
glaciers in the Untied States shrank less
in 2006 than they did in 2005.
However, for the close
to 30 reference glaciers only one (Echaurren
Norte in Chile) thickened over the same
period.
Notes to Editors
The latest WGMS figures can be accessed
at http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/mbb/mbb9/sum06.html
The potential impacts of climate change
on glaciers was outlined in the fourth assessment
report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (UNEP and the World Meteorological
Organisation) published in 2007.
Some highlights: Himalayan
glaciers are receding in a similar way as
glaciers in other mountain ranges at low
latitudes. Many glaciers in these areas
could, at current rates of global warming,
disappear within the coming decades.
Half a billion people
in the Himalaya-Hindu-Kush region and a
quarter billion downstream who rely on glacial
melt waters could be seriously affected.
The current trends in
glacial melt suggest that the Ganga, Indus,
Brahmaputra and other rivers that criss-cross
the northern Indian plain may become seasonal
rivers in the near future as a consequence
of climate change with important ramifications
for poverty and the economies in the region.
North America: "Heavily-utilized
water systems of the western US and Canada,
such as the Columbia River, that rely on
capturing snowmelt runoff will be especially
vulnerable," says the Fourth report
of IPCC Working Group II.
A two degree C warming
by the 2040s is likely to lead to sharply
reduced summer flows coinciding with sharply
rising demand.
The report estimates
that Portland, Oregon will by then require
over 26 million additional cubic meters
of water as a result of climate change and
population growth.
This will coincide with
a fall in summer supplies from the Columbia
River by an estimated five million cubic
meters.
Meanwhile, just over
40 per cent of the supply to southern California
is likely to be vulnerable by the 2020s
due to warming triggering losses of the
Sierra Nevada and Colorado River basin snow
pack.
In Latin America, the
IPCC warns of a melting of most tropical
glaciers in the near future (2020-2030).
The glacier retreat trend reported in the
Third Assessment Report of the IPCC is continuing
and reaching critical conditions in Bolivia,
Peru, Colombia and Ecuador.
Recent studies indicate
that most of the South American glaciers
from Colombia to Chile and Argentina (up
to 25ºS) are drastically reducing their
volume at an accelerated rate. Changes in
temperature and humidity are the primary
cause for the observed glacier retreat during
the 2nd half of the 20th century in the
tropical Andes. In the next 15 years inter-tropical
glaciers are very likely to disappear, affecting
water availability and hydropower generation.
Nick Nuttall, UNEP
