Glaciers contain 20% less freshwater than estimated

Ground Report | New Delhi: Many mountain populations depend on glacial freshwater not only to drink but also to generate energy or irrigate crops. A group of researchers from the IGE (Institute of Environmental Geosciences) and Dartmouth College have reviewed the first atlas that measured the movement and thickness of these ice giants to update the parameters of more than 250,000 mountain glaciers.

Glaciers freshwater estimated

The study, published in Nature Geoscience, affirms that the volume of glaciers has been poorly evaluated until now and concludes that there is 20% less ice in the world, and therefore freshwater than previously thought.

"Discovering how much ice is stored in glaciers is a key step in anticipating the effects of climate change on society," said Romain Millan, IGE postdoc and lead author of the study. "With this information, we will be closer to understanding the size of the largest glacial water reservoirs and also to considering how to respond to a world with fewer glaciers," he noted.

"The finding of less ice is important and will have implications for millions of people around the world," said Mathieu Morlighem, the Evans Family Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth and co-author of the study. "However, even with this research, we still don't have a perfect picture of how much water is actually trapped in these glaciers ."

Less water

The new atlas covers 98% of the world's glaciers. According to the study, many of these glaciers are shallower than estimated in previous research. Glacier double-counting along the peripheries of Greenland and Antarctica also modified previous data sets.

The study found less ice in some regions and more ice in others, with the overall result that there is less glacial ice around the world than previously thought.

The research found that there is nearly a quarter less glacial ice in the tropical Andes mountains of South America. The finding means there is up to 23% less freshwater stored in an area that millions of people depend on in their daily lives. The reduction in this amount of freshwater is the equivalent of completely drying up Mono Lake, the third-largest lake in California.

By contrast, the Himalayan mountains of Asia were found to have more than a third more ice than previous estimates. The result suggests that around 37% more water resources could be available in the region, even though the continent's glaciers are melting rapidly.

Less sea level rise

The melting of glaciers due to climate change is one of the main causes of sea-level rise. Glaciers are currently estimated to contribute 25-30% to overall sea level rise, threatening around 10% of the world's population living less than 30 feet above sea level.

Reducing glacial ice available for sea-level rise by 20% reduces the potential glacial contribution to sea level by 3 inches, revising it downward from 13 inches to just over 10 inches. This projection includes contributions from all the world's glaciers except the two large Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which have a much larger potential contribution to sea-level rise.

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