Mountain glaciers are essential water sources for nearly a quarter of the global population. But figuring out just how much ice they hold — and how much water will be available as glaciers shrink in a warming world — has been notoriously difficult.
In a new study, scientists mapped the speed of over 200,000 glaciers to get closer to an answer. They discovered that widely used estimates of glacier ice volume may be off by about 20 per cent in terms of how much Earth’s glaciers outside the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could contribute to sea level rise.
Mathieu Morlighem, a leader in ice sheet modeling and a coauthor of the study, explains why the new results hold a warning for regions that rely on glaciers’ seasonal meltwater, but barely register in the big picture of rising seas.
— source theconversation.com | Mathieu Morlighem | 08 Feb 2022