By olduvai in Environment on April 13, 2019 .
High mountain ice is vital to millions. As the world warms, the glaciers' global melt could see the frozen peaks vanish.
LONDON, 12 April, 2019 – Many of the planet's most scenic – and most valued – high-altitude landscapes are likely to look quite different within the next 80 years: the glaciers' global melt will have left just bare rock.
By the century's end, Europe's famous Alps – the chain of snow- and ice-covered peaks that have become a playground of the wealthy and a source of income and pleasure for generations – will have lost more than nine-tenths of all its glacier ice.
And in the last 50 years, the world's glaciers – in Asia, the Americas, Europe, Africa and the sub-Arctic mountains – have lost more than nine trillion tonnes of ice as global temperatures creep ever upwards in response to profligate combustion of fossil fuels.
And as meltwater has trickled down the mountains, the seas have risen by 27mm, thanks entirely to glacial retreat.
In two separate studies, Swiss scientists have tried to audit a profit and loss account for the world's frozen high-altitude rivers, and found a steady downhill trend.
Glacial ice is a source of security and even wealth: in the poorest regions the annual summer melt of winter snow and ice banked at altitude can guarantee both energy as hydropower and water for crops in the valleys and floodplains.
In wealthy regions, the white peaks and slopes become sources of income as tourist attractions and centres for winter sport – as well as reliable sources of power and water.