Today, we are reminded to take a moment to contemplate the frozen rivers found on every continent but Australia. Nearly 200,000 glaciers, flanking mountains and flowing from ice sheets, provide fresh water to a billion people and the means to grow food to many more. These ancient sources of water, consistent for millennia, are shrinking now as we warm the planet. 5% of glacial ice has been lost since the turn of the century- just 25 years. The blink of an eye in geologic time. While most of the world’s fresh water is held in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, it is the glacial water that flows down mountains, into rivers, that people need to survive in many communities around the world.
Some glaciers move only centimeters per day, but others, like Jacobshaven in Greenland, can move tens of meters each day, depositing massive amounts of ice into the ocean. This flow occurs in the warm months of the year. In winter, snow falls, building new ice on top of the glacier. When there is less winter snow than summer water flow, the glacier diminishes over time, adding to sea level rise and reducing the overall size of the glacier. As global temperatures continue to climb, scientists anticipate that two-thirds of the glaciers on earth will be completely gone by 2100. This will change the face of the planet and will create uninhabitable land that currently supports human life. These reservoirs of fresh water are critical to our communities.
So what is to be done? It is the carbon in the atmosphere that is warming the world and only a reduction in that carbon can cool things down. This is a global effort of fossil fuel reduction and alternative energy support to change our trajectory. Many countries are committed to this shift, with more electric cars, new fuels for shipping, aviation fuels that produce fewer emissions and alternatives for powering homes. The complexity of change is difficult, but it is not as difficult as the complexity of disaster, nor is it as expensive. While there will always be some fossil fuel use, we have all the tools we need to vastly reduce how much we use and how much carbon is blown into our carbon rich atmosphere.
For the sake of these beautiful, ancient rivers of ice and the abundance they provide to humans and other life here on earth, we need to continue to work toward a cooler planet so we can continue to revere the incredible glaciers that give us so much.
