A scientist from the University of Leeds has joined an international team responding to the global loss of glaciers.
Professor Jonathan Carrivick from the School of Geography has joined 36 other world-leading researchers on the newly formed Glacier Stewardship Programme (GSP).
The initiative aims to face up to the challenge of safeguarding the planet’s glaciers, mitigating the impacts of their rapid melting and protecting their biodiversity.
The global issues that the programme addresses are insurmountable without joined up international policy-led action.
It has been set up amid fears that many glaciers will become extinct by the end of the century, and it answers the call of the UN declaration of 2025 as the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation, and the United Nations Decade of Action for Cryospheric Research.
Glaciers store 70% of Earth’s freshwater and the more than 200,000 glaciers around the world underpin the food and water security of billions of humans.
Members of the programme say that glacier ice is at the frontline of the ongoing climate crisis. Rigorous analysis shows that even with the most ambitious goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, up to half of the world’s glaciers will disappear by the end of the century.
Populations at risk
Professor Carrivick said: “The world’s populations face an extremely challenging future where the loss of glaciers globally will drive rising sea levels, and then changing weather patterns, producing more intensive droughts and famines.
“During rapid deglaciation, populations are at risk from glacier hazards such as outburst floods, and the landscapes that will be exposed as glaciers disappear will initially be unstable creating problems for infrastructure and people downstream”.
Hundreds of millions of people live in the shadow of mountain landscapes destabilized by warming, and glaciers are also Earth’s largest freshwater ecosystems, providing a unique home to tens of thousands of microbial species.
Professor Carrivick added: “The GSP is made up of an exciting and ambitious group of internationally-recognised academics, and this offers me a chance to contribute to a network that should become far greater than the sum of its parts because the global issues that the programme addresses are insurmountable without joined up international policy-led action.”
Priorities
The alliance of scientists will address three priorities to help address the challenges and consequences of glacier loss:
- Evaluating, testing, and developing new technical approaches to help slow ice loss.
- Transforming early-warning systems to protect communities from glacier-linked hazards in some of Earth’s most perilous mountain ranges.
- Establishing a unique biobank – or microbial zoo – to save glacier biodiversity for future generations.
Professor Carrivick has already carried out extensive research into changes to mountain glaciers and ice caps. This includes a study published two years ago which found widespread loss of glaciers and ice caps in Greenland since the start of the 20th century. It also revealed that they had lost at least 587 km3 of ice over the last century, accounting for 1.38 millimetres of sea-level rise.
A previous study led by Jonathan concluded that the Himalayan glaciers had lost ice ten times more quickly over the last few decades than on average since the last major glacier expansion 400 to 700 years ago. It also found that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking far more rapidly than glaciers in other parts of the world.
He said: “The chance to be involved with this truly interdisciplinary team and for our research to become as meaningful as possible is challenging in the best way, and I am looking forward to developing our ideas into action.”
Further information
Image shows Professor Carrivick at Nigardsbreen, Norway.
For media enquiries, please contact Kersti Mitchell in the University of Leeds press office via k.mitchell@leeds.co.uk