By James Painter, BBC News, Khapi, Bolivia Marcos Choque is a 67-year-old Aymara Indian with holes in his trousers and battered sandals. He appears remarkably cheerful. Sitting among his fellow villagers from Khapi, perched high up in the Bolivian Andes, he seems to delight in cracking jokes. But ask him about Illimani – the 6,400m […]
It appears that the largest Arctic glacier, the Petermann glacier in Greenland, is about to get a bit smaller. Reports from scientists monitoring the situation indicate that a chuck of ice the size of Manhattan (100 sq. kilometers) is about the fall off, with the suspected cause being at least partially to do with […]
Shangri-La is in trouble. According to an article by Stephen Faris in Foreign Policy and the IPCC, the Himalayan glacier in the Kashmir province that provides 90 percent of Pakistan’s water for agricultural irrigation will disappear by 2035 as a consequence of climate change. Appropriately titled “The Last Straw,” the article reviews water conflicts exacerbated […]
One of the world’s largest glaciers on the west coast of Greenland is shrinking at an alarming rate as a result of global warming with potentially dire consequences. Ilulissat, a UNESCO-listed glacier, is shedding ice into the sea faster than ever before, according to one of Denmark’s top experts on glaciology. Andreas Peter Ahlstroem, […]
Increased melting of the large polar ice sheets contributes to the observed increase in sea level. Observations of the area of the Greenland ice sheet that has been at the melting point temperature at least one day during the summer period shows a 50% increase during the period 1979 to 20086 (see figure). The Greenland […]
ZURICH (Reuters) – Switzerland’s glaciers shrank by 12 percent over the past decade, melting at their fastest rate due to rising temperatures and lighter snowfalls, a study by the Swiss university ETH showed Monday. “The last decade was the worst decade that we have had in the last 150 years. We lost a lot […]
Beijing (AFP) June 20, 2009 – A drought in Tibet has intensified into the region’s worst in three decades, leaving thousands of hectares parched and killing more than 13,000 head of cattle, China’s state media said Saturday. The report by Xinhua news agency follows a warning by China’s top weather official last month that the […]
By Ben Simon BUNDIBUGYO, Uganda (AFP) — In 1906, Mount Speke, one the highest peaks of Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains was covered with 217 hectares (536 acres) of ice, according to the Climate Change Unit at Uganda?s ministry of water and environment. In 2006, only 18.5 hectares remained. Satellite images taken in 1987 and again in […]
(University of Alaska Fairbanks) The Greenland ice sheet is melting faster than expected according to a new study led by a University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher and published in the journal Hydrological Processes. Study results indicate that the ice sheet may be responsible for nearly 25 percent of global sea rise in the past 13 […]
By Geoff Morgan New research from Glacier National Park, Montana, indicates that the park’s glaciers are disappearing at faster rate than previously believed. Dr. Dan Fagre, of the United States Geological Survey, has studied the glaciers and ecology of Glacier National Park since 1991, and is now suggesting that all glaciers in the national park […]
