UN Says Some of the Last Glaciers Will Be Lost by 2050 Due to Climate Change

According to UN research, our planet will unavoidably lose glaciers owing to climate change by 2050, including the last ones in Africa. UNESCO research states that the glaciers at one-third of the UN World Heritage sites would disappear within three decades. Additionally, the last glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro, the Alps, and Yosemite National Park in the US will all disappear. No matter what the world does to stop climate change, the authors claim, they will melt. The research, which uses satellite data to construct forecasts, comes as world leaders get ready to gather in Egypt for the COP27 climate change meeting next week. Furthermore, 50 UN World Heritage Sites feature a total of about 18,600 glaciers that have been identified. They include popular tourist destinations and locations sacred to the local populace, and they make up almost 10% of the Earth's glacierized surface. According to the report, the retreat and eventual extinction of glaciers were "among the most dramatic evidence that Earth's climate is warming." [caption id="attachment_59209" align="aligncenter" width="1600"] image credit: yahoo[/caption] One of the authors and UNESCO project officer Tales Carvalho Resende remarked, "We hope we might be wrong, but this is the hard science. Glaciers are one of the valuable indicators of climate change because they're visible. This is something we can really see happening." What's more If global warming is kept to 1.5C, we could preserve the remaining glaciers in the remaining two-thirds of UN World Heritage sites, according to the authors. But last week, a different UN analysis concluded that there was "no credible pathway" for the world to get there right now. Moreover, the forecasts expand on a prior study that utilized models to predict how glaciers at World Heritage sites will change over time. According to Beata Csatho, a glaciologist at the University of Buffalo not involved in the study, "What is quite unprecedented in the historical record is how quickly this is happening." She said, "In the middle of the 1900s, glaciers were quite stable. Then there is this incredibly fast retreat." [caption id="attachment_59207" align="aligncenter" width="1600"] image credit: bbc[/caption] According to the report, the observed global sea level increase between 2000 and 2020 may have contributed to up to 4.5% of the ice loss in World Heritage sites. In addition, every year, these glaciers shed 58 billion tonnes of ice, which is equal to the combined annual water demand of France and Spain. More details According to Prof. Duncan Quincey, a glaciology expert at the University of Leeds not involved in the research, many people also rely on glaciers as their water source for home use and agriculture. Therefore, their disappearance could cause a shortage of fresh water during the dry seasons. "That leads to food security issues because they were using that water to irrigate their crops," according to Quincey. [caption id="attachment_59212" align="aligncenter" width="1600"] image credit: reuters[/caption] On another note, the report's authors assert that the flooding brought on by glacier decline will hit the local communities and indigenous people the hardest and urge them to put early-warning and risk-reduction disaster systems in place. However, limiting global warming is the clearest thing we need to do. image credit:  Doomsday Glacier Is Melting Fast: Scientists Worry Carvalho Resende stated, "There's a message of hope here. If we can manage to drastically cut emissions, we will be able to save most of these glaciers. This is really a call to take action at every level - not only at the political level but at our level as human beings."