Science News | Research: Climate Change Linked to Coastal Glacier Retreat | LatestLY

Washington [US]July 15 (ANI): Researchers at the University of Texas Institute of Geophysics (UTIG) and Georgia Tech have developed a methodology that they think decodes why coastal glaciers are shrinking, and in turn, how much of it can be attributed to human-caused climate change.

Attributing the role of humans to coastal glaciers – which are melting directly into the ocean – could pave the way for better predictions of sea level rise. The study was published in the journal The Cryosphere.

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So far, scientists have tested the approach only in computer models using simplified glaciers. They found that even modest global warming is causing most glaciers to melt, or retreat.

The next step, the researchers say, is for scientists to simulate coastal glaciers from real ice sheets, such as Greenland, which stores enough ice to raise sea levels by about 22 feet (7 meters). That will reveal whether they are retreating due to climate change and help predict when major ice loss may occur next.

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“Our proposed methodology is a roadmap for making confident statements about what the human role is [in glacial retreats]says glaciologist John Christian, who is a postdoctoral researcher at The University of Texas at Austin and Georgia Tech. “Those statements can then be communicated to the public and policy makers, and assist in their decision making.”

The methodology is unique in that it treats rapid glacier retreats as individual probabilistic events, such as forest fires or tropical storms. For a major retreat to occur, the glacier must retreat past a “stability threshold,” which is usually a steep rise in bedrock that helps slow its flow.

The probability of occurrence varies depending on the local climate and ocean conditions which change with natural fluctuations and human-induced warming. Even small variations can cause major changes in the behavior of glaciers, making them difficult to predict and leading to cases where glaciers are found retreating right next to those that are not.

That, says co-author and UTIG glaciologist Ginny Catania, is why the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found too much uncertainty about coastal glaciers to say whether their decline was due to human-caused climate change or natural climate fluctuations.

The new study shows how to address uncertainty by providing a methodology that takes into account the differences between glaciers and natural climate fluctuations while testing the influence of background trends such as global warming. According to Catania, the research means they can now link the retreat of mass coastal glaciers to climate change and not just natural variability.

“And it’s the first time anyone has done that,” he said.

To test the methodology, the team ran thousands of simulations over the last 150 years with and without global warming. Simulations show that even modest warming dramatically increases the likelihood of a glacier retreating as wide as an ice sheet.

When scientists ran models without human-caused climate change, they found that it was nearly impossible for more than a few glaciers to start retreating within a few years of each other.

In contrast, since 2000, nearly all (200) of Greenland’s 225 coastal glaciers have suffered some degree of retreat.

“This study gives us a toolbox for determining the role of humans in ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica, to say with confidence that it wasn’t just coincidence,” said Georgia Tech glaciologist and co-author Alex Robel. (ANI)

(This is an unedited story and is auto-generated from the Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not change or edit the content content)

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