Study Sees Complete Deglaciation Of Entire Mountain Ranges As Possible

[hatrack]

ZURICH, Switzerland, August 5, 2005 (ENS) - "Global warming caused by human activities may result in the complete disappearance of glaciers from entire mnountain ranges, according to the latest update of a United Nations supported report issued once every five years. The World Glacier Monitoring Service warns that the greenhouse effect is leading to processes 'without precedent in the history of the Earth.'

'The last five-year period of the 20th century has been characterized by an overall tendency of continuous if not accelerated glacier melting,' says the World Glacier Monitoring Serivce 1995-2000 edition of the Fluctuations of Glaciers report, compiled with the support of the UN Environmnent Programme (UNEP).

'The two decades 1980-2000 show a trend of increasingly negative balances with average annual ice thickness losses of a few ecimetres,' the report adds. 'The observed trend of increasingly negative mass balancs is consistent with accelerated global warming.'

Analysis of repeated inventories show that glaciers in the European Alps have lost more than 50 percent of their volume since the middle of the 19th century, and that a further loss of roughly one fourth the remaining volume is estimated to have ocurred since the 1970s, the report states. 'With a realistic scenario of future atmospheric warming, almost complete deglaciation of many mountain ranges could occur within decades, leaving only some ice on the ver highest peaks,' it says."

EDIT

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2005/2005-08-05-05.asp

[wli]

1. could you spellcheck?

Thanks.

[kenny blankenship]

2. Worrywarts! The market will provide!

If the market thinks those mountains NEED ice on them, a technological substitute will be found and a profit made supplying that need.
It all works out.

[despairing optimist]

3. I'll take 100 million tons of Purple Mountain Majesty to go, please.

Gotta hurry. Frosty the Snowman's in my car and he's mean when he melts.

[phantom power]

4. Is anybody accounting for decreasing albedo?

A lot of surface area that used to be white is now blue, green or brown. Yet another positive feedback thingy to keep track of.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Albedo has risen

The skies had become more cloudy in the decades after WWII, increasing the albedo. The warming really has been from greenhouse gas effects.

The downside is that the cloud cover has dropped dramatically in the last three years. I assume the albedo has fallen as well. But we're entering the exciting phase of our ride.

There's also the dramatic increase in particulate matter to consider -- tremendous increases in desertification, massive forest fires, and good old fashioned air pollution are both insolation heat sinks and promote water vapor nucleation; water suspended in the air also has a greenhouse effect, and it tends to precipitate, too.

Like I said -- the wild ride is just getting started.

--p!