Alpine, Andean Glaciers Shrink For 18th Straight Year @ Double Rate Of Late 1990s - Bloomberg

Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Glaciers from the Andes to Alaska and across the Alps shrank as much as 3 meters (10 feet), the 18th year of retreat and twice as fast as a decade ago, as global warming threatens an important supply of the world’s water. Alpine glaciers lost on average 0.7 meters of thickness in 2007, the most recent figures available, data published today by the University of Zurich’s World Glacier Monitoring Service showed. The melting extends an 11-meter retreat since 1980.

“One year doesn’t tell us much, it’s really these long-term trends that help us to understand what’s going on,” Michael Zemp, a researcher at the University of Zurich’s Department of Geography, said in an interview. “The main thing that we can do to stop this is reduce greenhouse gases” that are blamed for global warming.

The Alps have suffered more than other regions with half of the region’s glacier terrain having disappeared since the 1850s, Zemp said. Almost 90 percent of the glaciers in the Alps are smaller than 1 square kilometer (0.4 square mile) and some are as thin as 30 meters, he said.

Some maritime glaciers, or those that terminate in the sea, have grown in recent years, including 2007, Zemp said. They include glaciers at Nigardsbreen, Norway, and Alaska that were helped by temperatures that remain below freezing and ample snow. Glaciers further inland in Alaska in such sites as the Kenai mountains and Scandinavia matched the overall declining trend seen in Chile, Colombia and throughout the Alps.

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