Glaciers and ice sheets: Current status and trends
About 10 % of the land surface on Earth is covered by glacier ice, with an estimated total volume equivalent to about 66 m of potential sea-level rise. Almost the totality (99 %) of this volume is locked in the polar ice sheets, while less than 1 % forms all the other mountain glaciers and ice caps....
| Published in: | Rendiconti Lincei |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Conference Object |
| Language: | English |
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2014
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12079/6169 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12210-013-0255-z http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84896391059&partnerID=40&md5=211be7d33abd23b37b5b1647c71b6c27 |
| Summary: | About 10 % of the land surface on Earth is covered by glacier ice, with an estimated total volume equivalent to about 66 m of potential sea-level rise. Almost the totality (99 %) of this volume is locked in the polar ice sheets, while less than 1 % forms all the other mountain glaciers and ice caps. In the last three decades, the general retreat of the mountain glaciers and the accelerated flow and ice loss from several outlet glaciers draining the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets came to general attention as a major evidence of climate warming and as a potential contribution to the sea-level rise, to local shortage of water resources and to other environmental risks. Here, we present a short review of the most recent data and assessments on the present status and on trends of glaciers and polar ice sheets. The Greenland ice sheet (12 % of total glacier ice volume) over the last three decades showed an increase of the extent of the surface melt area and an acceleration of many marine-terminating glaciers; as a consequence, the ice sheet is losing ice at an increasing rate that reached -263 ± 30 Gt/year in the 2005-2010 time interval, equivalent to a sea-level rise of 0.72 ± 0.08 mm/year. The much larger, higher and colder composite Antarctic ice sheet (87 % of total glacier ice volume), in the same 2005-2010 time interval, had an ice loss of -81 ± 37 Gt/year. Mountain glaciers and ice caps are retreating in all the major glacierized regions, with the exception of a few mountain areas where contrasting patterns have been observed. Although containing less than 1 % of the total glacier ice, mountain glaciers and ice caps suffered a total ice loss of -259 ± 28 Gt/year in the period 2003-2009, equivalent to a sea-level rise of 0.71 ± 0.08 mm/year. The overall contribution of glaciers and ice sheets is estimated equivalent to a sea-level rise of 1.50 ± 0.16 mm/year for the period 2003-2009, or about 60 % of the total sea-level rise in the same period. Various estimates of the total glacier contribution to the ... |
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