70% of glaciers at risk in this century

More than half of half of the 215,000 glaciers on the earth's surface (excluding Greenland and Antarctica) may disappear within the century even in the most optimistic scenario of a

set by the Paris Agreement, according to a study led by NASA researcher David Rounce and published in the journal

.

The deglaciation could erase 70% of the great ice masses in the high mountains with an increase in temperatures of two degrees and be even greater with

, with the current trend of the greenhouse gas emissions.

The projections of the team of 12 world experts, led by David Rounce, go beyond the predictions made to date, which predicted the disappearance of 10% of the glaciers in 2050 if the objective of 1.5 degrees was met.

The new study warns that

.

The report anticipates the total disappearance of glaciers by 2100 in

, where 19 survivors remain in the Pyrenees.

The consequences are serious.

More than 1.9 billion people depend on glaciers for drinking water and irrigation.

The melting of the ice could also cause

such as those of 2022 in Pakistan (the country with the largest number of glaciers in the world, more than 7,000) that caused 1,300 fatalities and flooded a third of the national surface.

The floods were due to the combination of monsoon rains with the violent overflow of at least 16 glacial lakes, after a severe heat wave.

"Although it is too late to stop the loss of many glaciers,

to limit the increase in temperatures will improve the conservation of those that remain," warn the Icelandic Gudfinna Adalgeirsdottir and the professor of the University of Swansea Timothy James in another article in the

magazine

.

commitments are needed

to be able to preserve glaciers in the mountainous regions of the planet," stresses David Rounce.

The French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) calculates that, between 2015 and 2019, the glaciers as a whole lost

of ice per year.

The fastest melting glaciers are those of the Alps, Alaska and Iceland.

In an optimal situation, glaciers slide down the slopes of the mountains in the form of a tongue and remain stable when the amount of ice lost at the bottom

with snowfall.

A decrease in precipitation or an increase in temperatures can accelerate melting and cause a glacier to recede in its valleys.

In the opinion of Antonio Ruiz de Elvira, professor of Applied Physics at the University of Alcalá, the study published this week in

serves to "concretize many previous partial data."

«

themselves », the Spanish physicist warns.

"Once they are gone, we will be without permanent snow on our mountains, and we will lack water. Since it will also rain less, we have to conserve the water we have... We must recycle as much water as possible, collect what the plants sweat and reuse it, and plant as many trees as possible on the slopes of the hills and mountains, to increase evapotranspiration on the other hand.And all this should be taken into account by those interested, from agricultural engineers, foresters, economists, and farmers, left and right.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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