Reykjavik, Iceland:
Iceland’s glaciers have lost about 750 square kilometres (290 square miles), or seven % of their surface, given that the turn of the millennium due to worldwide warming, a study published on Monday showed.
The glaciers, which cover more than 10 % of the country’s land mass, shrank in 2019 to 10,400 square kilometres, the study in the Icelandic scientific journal Jokull stated.
Since 1890, the land covered by glaciers has decreased by just about 2,200 square kilometres, or 18 %.
But just about a third of this decline has occurred given that 2000, according to the current calculations by glaciologists, geologists and geophysicists.
Experts have previously warned that Iceland’s glaciers are at danger of disappearing totally by 2200.
The ice’s retreat more than the previous two decades is just about equivalent to the total surface region of Hofsjokull, Iceland’s third-most significant ice cap at 810 square kilometres.
“Glacier-area variations in Iceland since around 1890 show a clear response to variations in climate,” the authors of the study wrote.
“They have been rather synchronous over the country, although surges and subglacial volcanic activity influence the position of some glacier margins,” they added.
In 2014, glaciologists stripped the Okjokull glacier of its status as a glacier, a initially for Iceland, immediately after figuring out that it was made up of dead ice and was no longer moving as glaciers do.
Nearly all of the world’s 220,000 glaciers are losing mass at an ever rising pace, contributing to more than a fifth of worldwide sea level rise this century, according to a study published in Nature in April.
Analysing pictures taken by NASA’s Terra satellite, they located that amongst 2000-2019, the world’s glaciers lost an typical of 267 billion tonnes of ice every year.
The group also located that the price of glacier melt had accelerated sharply in the course of the very same period.
Between 2000 and 2004, glaciers lost 227 billion tonnes of ice per year. But amongst 2015-2019, they lost an typical of 298 billion tonnes every year.
The findings will be integrated in a forthcoming assessment report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change due in 2022.
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