IMPACTS OF MELTING MOUNTAIN GLACIERS

Global concern is on alert for the melting of large ice sheets, Greenland, and much of the West Antarctic Ice sheet. The consequences that sea-level rise will accompany the melting ice sheet is transparent. What isn't completely clear is how much sea level will rise in individual locations. Another aspect of melting ice, one that doesn't receive as much attention, is the melting of mountain glaciers. The meltwater from these water towers is estimated to be a critical source of sustenance for one to two billion people. They provide the liquid that turns turbines to generate hydroelectric power and cool thermal power stations, contribute to drinking water, irrigation, and industrial uses. They are an economic boost to tourism, whether skiing on high mountain slopes or watching icebergs calving from a cruise ship at sea level. In some areas, their presence marks international boundaries.

The accelerate rate of the melting ice is well documented though paired images available for many glaciers throughout the world. These are a testimony, a canary in the coal mine, about how rapidly our planet is and has been warming in the latter half of the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. The fact that a location has gone from two to twenty glaciers is not good news. As a large mountain glacier disintegrates ice that connects different parts of a glacier disappears generating numerous smaller and struggling glaciers. Glacial melting can also lead to disaster. Water builds up in glacial lakes behind precarious dams made of poorly sorted sediment that can easily fail and fail catastrophically, clearing humans, houses and other life in its turbulent downhill path. I hope that this information can be used to spur people into action to reduce greenhouse gases before all traces of mountain glaciers are lost.