"As we watch the sun go down, evening after evening, through the smog across the poisoned waters of our native earth, we must ask our selves seriously whether we really wish some future universal historian on another planet to say about us " With al...
Glaciers are melting. The importance of glaciers is often overlooked by everyone.
Yet, the consequences of their disappearance would be grave and far reaching in the extreme. How?
An enormous mass of ice, moving slowly over land. That is a glacier. It has immense mass and combined with its gradual movement, can change the topology over a few thousand years. Combined with the fact that glacial ice can be millennia old, indicates that glaciers can provide information about the climatic conditions of millennia ago. It is done by extraction of ice cores from the glaciers. Various components of it are then analyzed, especially trapped air bubbles.
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Besides scientific purposes, glaciers help people in their daily lives too. Glacial melts are an important source of water for people living in arid mountain regions. Glaciers also feed many freshwater perennial rivers and thus provide water to both people and crops even outside arid regions. Glacial tills also provide fertile soils hence playing an important role in agriculture.
Believe it or not, glaciers' incredible sensitivity to climatic changes are actually the reason for their current peril. Since the early 20th century, it has been observed that glaciers have been melting at an alarming rate. This is attributed to the release of greenhouse gases that escalated steadily from the Industrial Revolution. The rate has been so amazingly high, that several ice caps and glaciers have disappeared altogether in this century itself. Several more are retreating rapidly and will probably disappear in the next few decades.
Calling the consequences of this event "grave" will be a mere understatement. To put the record straight, if all the ice in the world were to melt, the water level of the seas and oceans would rise by 230 feet around the world. This means that many islands and coasts would be underwater. It would also cause more frequent and intense coastal storms.
The best way to stop glaciers from melting would be to decrease global warming. The best way to do that will be to reduce emissions. Some scientists even say we are already beyond the point of no return. So, we have to take action to save our planet. And hope that we can do it before our planet dies.
