Melting galciers emerge as major concern for scientists

Melting glaciers are becoming a reason of concern for the scientists. The glaciers are melting must faster than it was calculated by the scientists. According to scientists human activities are the main cause of melting glaciers.

Austria: Earth's glaciers are melting much faster than scientists calculated in 2013. The loss of white sheet is accelerating more than in 1960s.

Lead author Michael Zemp, director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service at the University of Zurich said, "What we found is that glaciers lost a lot of ice. Since 1961 glaciers lost more than 9000 billion tons of ice. But that's a big number, I converted that and this is an ice cube of the size of Germany with a thickness of 30 meter or it's an ice cube of the size of the United States of America with the size of four feet. So it's a tremendous amount of ice and freshwater that we actually lost."

According to Zemp's research report Central Europe, the Caucasus region, western Canada, the U.S. Lower 48 states, New Zealand and near the tropics are the areas which are mostly affected as they are losing more than 1 percent of their mass each year. But on the other hand they found that the ice cover in the southwestern Asia are not shrinking because of their localized climate conditions.

The study has showed that in 18 other regions have been losing 80 billion tons of ice sheet every year since 2006. After taking a look into the report Zemp said that even if the carbon emission is stopped immediately the glaciers will still continue to melt and will lead to rise of global sea level.

He also said, " You see those glaciers are the second largest contributor, making about 25 to 30 percent of current sea level rise. The biggest one is the warming of the ocean, thermal expansion and then followed by the two ice sheets. The ice sheet in Greenland about the order of magnitude of the glaciers one quarter, and a little bit comes also from the Antarctic ice sheet that just started to melt. Contributing about 10 percent to the observed sea level rise."

But is there anything that we can do ? Yes, that is possible , at least to some extent , if we stop doing what we are doing . That is to stop emitting more carbon dioxide into the air . As one scientist says that the cause of glacier melting is largely due to human activities ." We can see throughout the 20th century the anthropogenic influence is growing as people start to emit more and more CO2 the atmosphere is warming and warming. And that meant that the glaciers kept melting. So now the glaciers are melting not because of natural causes but most because of anthropogenic (man made) causes. ", says Zemp's colleague Ben Marzeion from the University of Bremen, Germany, who also worked on the study.