Gloria Dickie

LONDON (Reuters), – Satellite technology and advances in the field of satellite technology revealed that there is significantly less ice in glaciers worldwide than thought. The findings were published Monday in Nature Geoscience.

Global sea level rise is now reduced by three inches according to the revised estimates, assuming all glaciers melt. It is a concern for communities that depend on glacier melt to feed their rivers or irrigate their crops. Water will be less plentiful in glaciers if they have less ice.

Although some glacier melts over the course of the year, increasing temperatures caused by climate change accelerate glacier retreat. This ice river lost 5.4 trillion tonnes in the period 2000-2019.

Many countries face problems due to the disappearance of glaciers. Peru has begun to invest in desalination as a way of replenishing its declining freshwater. Chile is also looking to make artificial glaciers in the mountains.

But, “we’ve had quite a poor understanding of how much ice is actually stored in glaciers,” said lead study author Romain Millan, a glaciologist at Université Grenoble Alpes. For example, past analyses double-counted the glaciers at the edges of Greenland’s and Antarctic ice sheet ice sheets. This led to an overestimation in ice volume.

Nature Geoscience studied how fast glaciers are moving over the landscape. It also measured their velocity. Scientists can measure volume with greater accuracy thanks to such measurements. The way that glaciers flow can be used as a guide for determining where the ice is thick and thin. However, technology has limited the ability to gather this information.

Millan stated that the most recent analysis by Millan of 98% of the world’s glaciers was possible thanks to high-resolution satellites.

More than 800,000 images of glaciers were analyzed. The results showed that most of them are shallower than previous assessments. Researchers now believe there are 20% less glacial-ice in the sea, which could melt and cause sea level rises. Glaciers are currently responsible for about 1mm annual sea level rise or 30% annually.

Daniel Farinotti of ETH Zurich, a glaciologist, stated that “this is one the first really remarkable results coming out of satellite advances.” He wasn’t involved in this research.

Millan and his colleagues also found that Asia’s Himalayas contain 37% more ice than previously estimated, while South America’s Andean glaciers contain roughly 27% less ice. Already, Peru’s glaciers lost 40% of their area in the 1970s.

He stated that this would put greater pressure on the freshwater supply in the Andes. On the contrary, the Himalayan mountains will provide more security for water.