Global Warming Melts 290 Square Miles of Iceland Glacier in 20 Years

A research published on Monday found that since the turn of the millennium, Iceland's glaciers have lost roughly 750 square kilometers (290 square miles), or 7% of their surface area, owing to global warming.

According to three-dimensional satellite assessments of all the world's alpine glaciers, glaciers are melting quicker, shedding 31% more snow and ice each year than they did 15 years ago.

Scientists determined that since 2015, the world's 220,000 mountain glaciers had lost more than 328 billion tons (298 billion metric tons) of ice and snow, based on 20 years of recently declassified satellite data. Each year, enough melt flows into the world's expanding oceans to submerge Switzerland by over 24 feet (7.2 meters).

Major Meltings

The United States and Canada are responsible for half of the world's ice loss.

The Columbia glacier is receding roughly 115 feet (35 meters) every year, making Alaska's melt rates "among the greatest on the globe."

Almost all of the world's glaciers are melting, even those that were once stable in Tibet. Except for a handful in Iceland and Scandinavia fed by higher precipitation, global melt rates are increasing.

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