Global warming: the melting ice has accelerated sharply in three decades
Icebergs floating near Kulusuk, Greenland, August 16, 2019. AP - Felipe Dana
Text by: RFI Follow
4 min
According to a study from the University of Leeds published in the scientific journal The Cryosphere, 28,000 billion tonnes of ice disappeared between 1994 and 2017. Melting ice has already contributed to the rise in sea levels.
This will have "very serious impacts on coastal communities" in the 21st century.
Publicity
Read more
+ 65%: this is the spectacular increase in the rate of melting of the Earth's ice cap between 1994 and 2017. The melting of the ice has accelerated sharply in three decades, according to the "
worst scenarios
", in the words used by the British University of Leeds which led this study.
The observation, drawn up on satellite observations of the cryosphere, is clear.
28,000 billion tonnes of ice have disappeared in the space of thirty years.
In a press release published Monday, January 25, researchers from the University of Leeds deliver an alarming comparison: 28,000 billion tonnes is "the
equivalent of a layer of ice 100 meters thick covering the whole Kingdom. United
”, which covers an area of over 242,000 km².
New #EGUhighlights: Review article: Earth's ice imbalance https://t.co/8Xqxu5nnfX pic.twitter.com/CqQMzKsKYG
- The Cryosphere (@EGU_TC) January 25, 2021
"The rise in the level of the oceans (...) will have very serious impacts on coastal communities"
In recent years, the rate of ice making on Earth has skyrocketed.
While it was "
800 billion tonnes per year in the 1990s
", it rose to "
1.3 trillion tonnes per year in 2017
".
The phenomenon is global, but it is in the
Arctic and Antarctic oceans
that the losses were the most important: the first lost 7,600 billion tons of ice, and the second 6,500 billion tons.
Mountain glaciers, meanwhile, have melted by 6,100 billion tonnes.
Thomas Slater, lead author of the study, warns: "
A rise in ocean levels of this magnitude will have very serious impacts on coastal communities this century
."
The level of the oceans has globally increased by 35mm.
However, according to the University of Leeds, "
every centimeter of rise in sea level threatens the displacement of approximately one million people living on low land
."
An alarmist tone already used by the United Nations in mid-January, while
2020 was the hottest year on record
, tied with 2016. The UN then predicted that the world was heading towards “
catastrophic
”
global warming
in 21st century.
Read our assessment of global #ice loss out today in @EGU_TC - Earth is losing ice 65% faster now than it was in the 1990s, at a rate of 1.3 trillion (metric) tonnes per year: https://t.co/ 3v68e52oA4 pic.twitter.com/ZzMMPsNx8o
- Tom Slater (@_tslater) January 25, 2021
(With AFP)
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Environment
Weather
Climate change
On the same subject
Reportage
Switzerland: the melting of the largest glacier in the Alps worries scientists
Global warming: in Italy, the Planpincieux glacier threatens to collapse