Melting glaciers pose growing global threats, scientists warn

Greenwire, 21 February 2006 - From Patagonia to Tibet to the Antarctic, the world's glaciers are in crisis, according to experts who gathered last weekend here at one of the world's largest scientific meetings.

Days after the publication of new research showing the rate at which Greenland's glaciers are shedding ice has doubled over the last five years, glaciologists at the annual meeting of the American Advancement of Science said that nearly all the world's ice sheets are showing similar worrying declines.

The growing flow of freshwater into the oceans could result in potentially catastrophic rises in sea level and changes in currents that drive world weather patterns, they said.
"This is what I'm worried about: Freshwater storage on Earth is out of balance for the first time in history" because of glaciers' increasingly rapid melting, said Mark Dyurgerov, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder, who noted that 77 percent of the Earth's freshwater is bound in ice. "And mankind is very sensitive to changes in sea level."