Climate change is taking a dramatic toll on glaciers in Alaska: Glacier melt in a major Alaskan icefield has accelerated and could reach an irreversible tipping point earlier than previously thought, a new scientific study released this week suggests.
Alaska has some of our planet’s largest icefields, and their melting is a major contributor to sea-level rise. As the ice melts, the level of the Earth's oceans rise, which will slowly put some of the world's coastal areas underwater.
"It’s incredibly worrying that our research found a rapid acceleration since the early 21st century in the rate of glacier loss across the Juneau icefield," study lead author Bethan Davies, a glaciologist in the U.K.'s Newcastle University, said in a statement.
Ice loss from glaciers and icefields as a result of human-caused global warming has been shown to contribute to rising sea levels, and Alaska is expected to remain the largest regional contributor to this effect throughout the rest of this century.
The new research, published in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature Communications, found that rates of glacier area shrinkage were five times faster from 2015 to 2019 than they had been from 1948 to 1979.
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