Water towers of the World: the most important mountainous and glacial regions in the Americas, which serve as the “water towers” for billions living downstream. Data: Walter Immerzeel, Utrecht University. Graphic: Brian T. Jacobs / National Geographic

World’s supply of fresh water in trouble as mountain ice vanishes – 1.9 billion people at risk from mountain water shortages – “The most important water towers are also among the most vulnerable”

By Alejandra Borunda 9 December 2019 (National Geographic) – High in the Himalaya, near the base of the Gangotri glacier, water burbles along a narrow river. Pebbles, carried in the small river’s flow, pling as they carom downstream. This water will flow thousands of miles, eventually feeding people, farms, and the natural world on the vast, […]

Alaska’s Columbia glacier began rapidly retreating around 1980, and its leading edge has moved more than 20 kilometers inland. These images, captured by the joint NASA / U.S. Geological Survey Landsat satellites, were stitched together into a video to show the glacier’s dynamic evolution from 1972 to 2019. Video: Mark Fahnestock / University of Alaska Fairbanks

Video: 47 years of satellite images show retreat of Alaskan’s Columbia glacier

By Carolyn Gramling 10 December 2019 SAN FRANCISCO (Science News) – A mesmerizing new series of images shows the retreat of Alaska’s Columbia glacier over the last 47 years in gorgeous, excruciating detail. The images were presented December 10 at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting. Landsat satellites operated by NASA and the U.S. Geological […]

Greenland ice thickness loss, 1993-2019. Graphic: IMBIE / CPOM / Leeds University

Greenland losing ice seven times faster than in the 1990s – Sea level rise from Greenland melt tracking highest climate projections

10 December 2019 (Utrecht University) – Greenland is losing ice seven times faster than in the 1990s and is tracking the IPCC’s high-end climate warming scenario, which would see 40 million more people exposed to coastal flooding by 2100. The findings, published in Nature today, show that Greenland has lost 3.8 trillion tonnes of ice […]

Rhone Glacier and Trient Glacier in Switzerland before and after melt caused by global warming. Photo: ReutersRhone Glacier and Trient Glacier in Switzerland before and after melt caused by global warming. Photo: Reuters

New photos vs old: comparisons show dramatic Swiss glacier retreat – “We have never seen such a fast rate of glacial decline since the measurements have started”

By Denis Balibouse 25 November 2019 THE FURKA PASS, Switzerland (Reuters) – On the hairpin bend of a Swiss mountain pass, a Victorian-era hotel built for tourists to admire the Rhone Glacier has been abandoned now that the ice has retreated nearly 2 km (1.2 miles) uphill. Where mighty glaciers once spilled into Swiss valleys […]

Aerial views of glaciers in Iceland taken in 1989 and 2019 showing how much ice has been lost over this 30-year period. Photo: National Land Survey of Iceland / Kieran Baxter

Images reveal Iceland’s glacier melt – “We saw a staggering difference in a very short amount of time”

By Rebecca Morelle 25 October 2019 (BBC News) – A photography project has highlighted the extent of ice loss from Iceland’s glaciers. A team from Scotland and Iceland compared photographs taken in the 1980s with present-day drone images. They focused on the south side of the Vatnajökull ice cap, which covers about 7,700sq km of […]

A mourner, dressed in black, stands in the Swiss Alps where the Pizol glacier once existed. The “funeral march” was held on 22 September 2019 to mark the disappearance of the Pizol glacier. Photo: Fabrice Coffrini

Swiss glacier volume reduced by 10 per cent in only five years – More than 500 small glaciers have vanished – Over the past 12 months, two percent of total Swiss glacier volume lost

15 October 2019 (Swiss Academy of Sciences) – During the summer heatwaves of 2019, glacier melt rates reached record levels. This led to another year of major losses of ice volume, as reported by the Cryospheric Commission of the Swiss Academy of Sciences. Switzerland’s glaciers have thus shrunk by 10 per cent over the past […]

Map showing 2015–2019 five-year average temperature anomalies relative to the 1981-2010 average. Data: NASA GISTEMP v4. through June 2019. Graphic: WMO

Landmark “United in Science” report brings together world’s leading climate science organizations

NEW YORK, 22 September 2019 (WMO) – The world’s leading climate science organizations have joined forces to produce a landmark new report  [pdf] for the United Nations Climate Action Summit, underlining the glaring – and growing – gap between agreed targets to tackle global warming and the actual reality. The report, United in Science, includes details on the […]

Satellite view of Humboldt glacier Venezuela in 1985, 2008, and 2019. Photo: Maxar Technologies

Hardy scientists trek to Venezuela’s last glacier amid chaos – “More than 50 million people in South America rely on water provision from the Andes”

By Christina Larson and Federica Narancio 24 September 2019 MERIDA, Venezuela (AP) – Blackouts shut off the refrigerators where the scientists keep their lab samples. Gas shortages mean they sometimes have to work from home. They even reuse sheets of paper to record field data because fresh supplies are so scarce. As their country falls […]

Satellite views of the Okjökull glacier in Iceland in 1986 and 2019. Data: Landsat / U.S. Geological Survey. Photo: Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory

Iceland commemorates first glacier lost to global warming – “The world that we learned how it was, learned by heart as some kind of eternal fact, is not a fact any more”

By Toby Luckhurst 18 August 2019 (BBC News) – Mourners have gathered in Iceland to commemorate the loss of Okjokull, which has died at the age of about 700. The glacier was officially declared dead in 2014 when it was no longer thick enough to move. What once was glacier has been reduced to a […]

Linkages between Amundsen Sea winds and global SST and SLP. Time series of zonal wind and zonal total stress over the PITT box, the SOI and the IPO. The legend shows the unit for each time series, and scaling for the axis values where appropriate. Graphic: Holland, et al., 2019 / Nature Geoscience

First evidence of human-caused climate change melting the West Antarctic Ice Sheet

12 August 2019 (British Antarctic Survey) – A new study published this week reveals the first evidence of a direct link between human-induced global warming and melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. UK-US researchers say that curbing greenhouse gas emissions now could reduce the future sea-level contribution from this region. Ice loss in West […]

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