Published 06:59 IST, August 24th 2020
Earth has lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice due to global warming since 1994: Study
In a shocking development of climate crisis, UK scientists have found that ‘staggering’ 28 trillion tonnes of ice has melted from the Earth since 1994.
In a shocking revelation of the climate crisis, a group of British scientists have found that ‘staggering’ 28 trillion tonnes of ice has melted from the planet since 1994. In a review paper published in the journal Cryosphere Discussions, scientists from Leeds and Edinburgh universities and University College London studied the satellite surveys of glaciers, mountains, and ice sheets between the years 1994 and 2017 to document the impact of global warming.
Based on the observations, the UK scientists made the revelation that by the end of the century, the drastic melting of ice sheets and glaciers can raise the sea levels to possibly reach 3 feet. While talking to the Guardian, the director of Leeds University’s Center for Polar Observation and Modelling Professor Andy Shepherd explained that every centimetre of sea-level rise implies displacement of nearly one million people from their homelands.
In the whopping loss of 28 trillion, as per the research, 7.6 trillion tonnes from the Arctic Sea, 6.5 trillion tonnes from Antarctic ice shelves, 6.2 trillion tonnes of mountain glaciers, 3.8 trillion tonnes of Greenland ice sheet, 2.5 trillion tonnes of Antarctic ice sheet and 0.9 trillion tonnes of mountain glaciers have reduced in their masses.
It also added, “Just over half (60 %) of the ice loss was from the northern hemisphere, and the remainder (40 %) was from the southern hemisphere. The rate of ice loss has risen by 57 % since the 1990s – from 0.8 to 1.2 trillion tonnes per year.”
Green ice sheet melted at record rate in 2019
Meanwhile, in a separate analysis about global warming, the scientists found out that the loss of Greenland ice sheet, the largest contributor to the rise in sea level, occurred at a record rate in 2019, surpassing the previous values by 15 per cent. In a study published in the journal Nature states that the scale at which glaciers are melting is ‘unprecedented’ as per records dating as back as 1948. The immediate cause of such huge loss, explained by the researchers, is the high-pressure systems that became blocked over Greenland last summer.
“Not only is the Greenland ice sheet melting, but it’s melting at a faster and faster pace,” said study lead author Ingo Sasgen, a geoscientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany.
Updated 06:59 IST, August 24th 2020