{"id":263416,"date":"2021-05-31T23:22:47","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T20:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/icelands-glaciers-lose-750-km2-in-20-years\/"},"modified":"2021-05-31T23:22:47","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T20:22:47","slug":"icelands-glaciers-lose-750-km2-in-20-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/icelands-glaciers-lose-750-km2-in-20-years\/","title":{"rendered":"#Iceland’s glaciers lose 750 km2 in 20 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Iceland’s glaciers lose 750 km2 in 20 years<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\n Between 2000-2019, the world’s glaciers lost an average of 267 billion tonnes of ice each year.
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Iceland’s glaciers have lost around 750 square kilometers (290 square miles), or seven percent of their surface, since the turn of the millennium due to global warming, a study published on Monday showed.<\/p>\n


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The glaciers, which cover more than 10 percent of the country’s land mass, shrank in 2019 to 10,400 square kilometers, the study in the Icelandic scientific journal Jokull said.<\/p>\n

Since 1890, the land covered by glaciers has decreased by almost 2,200 square kilometers, or 18 percent.<\/p>\n

But almost a third of this decline has occurred since 2000, according to the recent calculations by glaciologists, geologists and geophysicists.<\/p>\n

Experts have previously warned that Iceland’s glaciers are at risk of disapp<\/a>earing entirely by 2200.<\/p>\n

The ice’s retreat over the past two decades is almost equivalent to the total surface area of Hofsjokull, Iceland’s third-biggest ice cap at 810 square kilometers.<\/p>\n

“Glacier-area variations in Iceland since around 1890 show a clear response to variations in climate,” the authors of the study wrote.<\/p>\n

“They have been rather synchronous over the country, although surges and subglacial volcanic activity influence the position of some glacier margins,” they added.<\/p>\n

In 2014, glaciologists strip<\/a>ped the Okjokull glacier of its status as a glacier, a first for Iceland, after determining that it was made up of dead ice and was no longer moving as glaciers do.<\/p>\n

Nearly all of the world’s 220,000 glaciers are losing mass at an ever increasing pace, contributing to more than a fifth of global sea level rise this century, according to a study published in Nature<\/i> in April.<\/p>\n

Analyzing images taken by NASA’s Terra satellite, they found that between 2000-2019, the world’s glaciers lost an average of 267 billion tons of ice each year.<\/p>\n

The team also found that the rate of glacier melt had accelerated sharply during the same period.<\/p>\n

Between 2000 and 2004, glaciers lost 227 billion tons of ice per year. But between 2015-2019, they lost an average of 298 billion tons each year. <\/p>\n

The findings will be included in a forthcoming assessment report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change due in 2022.<\/p>\n\n

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Satellites show world’s glaciers melting faster than ever\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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\n \u00a9 2021 AFP<\/p>\n

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Citation<\/strong>:
\n Iceland’s glaciers lose 750 km2 in 20 years (2021, May 31)
\n retrieved 31 May 2021
\n from https:\/\/phys.org\/news<\/a>\/2021-05-iceland-glaciers-km2-years.html<\/p>\n

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