Sea level rise is perhaps the most serious impact. Coastal towns and cities face increasing storm surges and becoming permanently flooded. Alongside this, the loss of freshwater from glaciers means less to drink, to water crops, or to use in generating electricity.
These vast rivers of ice perform a crucial role in regulating the Earth’s atmosphere. Ice cools air and reflects the sun’s heat away from the planet’s surface, acting as an air conditioning system. Melting glaciers reduce this cooling potential, but researchers have discovered that as meltwaters shrink, this also allows microscopic bacteria and fungi in rivers to release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Along with carbon released by thawing the ground, and from microbes or soot stored in the ice itself, this negative climate feedback helps warm the planet further. Glaciologists studying tidewater glaciers in Alaska say that the warming sea is causing them to melt 100 times faster than was previously thought.
Alaskan and other communities that rely on meltwaters face a new problem – the sudden disappearance of rivers. This happens when a river’s course is changed by rapid glacial melt. In Canada’s Yukon the Slim’s River changed course in a few days, drying up one river, lowering nearby Kane Lake levels by almost two meters, and leaving residents and migrating salmon high and dry.
Data gathered by the World Glacier Monitoring Service more than a decade ago suggested that the loss of glaciers threatened the livelihood of more than two billion people relying on meltwater in nearby rivers.
Glaciologist Jennifer Wadham told the World Economic Forum in 2021 that glacier loss is an “imminent threat to life”. She assesses that glaciers “are lifelines to us, through their fresh waters, but also how they connect with the very fragile environments and ecosystems around them as life-support machines in many ways.”
Melting glaciers attached to the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets present the biggest threat because temperatures are rising the fastest near the poles and in high-altitude regions like the Himalayas. Earth is as warm now as it was 125,000 years ago when sea levels were six to nine meters (20-30 feet) higher, and melts could easily accelerate.
Scientists say the Greenland ice sheet is at a tipping point, and one or two meters of sea-level rise from ice loss is likely. Researchers observing the Thwarts glacier in western Antarctica – called the ‘doomsday glacier’ – say its fate is in a delicate balance. Alone, it could contribute 65 cm (2 feet) to sea levels.
One study from Cornell University says the rise will probably happen quickly, leaving nations with the disastrous situation of more people on less land. By 2100, there could be as many as two billion climate refugees pushing inland from rising seas. Future-proofing against this scenario, say, researchers, means containing greenhouse gas levels and planning for a vastly different world.
During the past year, numerous studies identified the extinction risk of several large species groups including one-third of shark species, 30% of European birds, and half of the world’s turtles, to name a few.
On September 29, 2021, the US Fish and Wildlife Service declared it would be removing 23 species from its Endangered Species Act, including the ivory-billed woodpecker, the Bach man’s warbler songbird, eight species of mussels, various Hawaiian birds, and freshwater fish. Not because they had pulled back from the brink of extinction, but because the USES believed these species would never recover, and were most likely extinct, therefore not requiring protection.
Based on rigorous reviews of the best available science for each of these species, the Service has determined these species are extinct, and thus no longer require listing under the ESA, the statement read. Protections were provided too late for these 23 species.
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