2023-08-27 17:08:31
The poles and glaciers are among the most vulnerable areas to climate change caused by the combustion of fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal). By the end of the century, between 50% and 80% of the world’s glaciers could have disappeared. Scientists point out that 1 kilo of CO2 emitted corresponds to 15 kilos of melting glaciers. Why are glaciers and the poles so fragile in the face of global warming? Why are they so important for human life? How to deal with this accelerated melting?
French glaciologist and explorer Heïdi Sevestre provides answers in this episode of the “Human Heat” podcast, broadcast on October 18, 2022 on the website of the Monde.
What does the accelerated melting of the ice change in the global climatic balance of the planet?
Ice cream is essential for us. You rarely think about it, because it’s so far away, in the very high mountains or in the polar regions. But our daily lives and our future depend on the health of these ice creams. I am talking about glaciers, the polar ice caps – Greenland and Antarctica –, but also all other ice, such as permafrost [pergélisol, en français], the ground permanently frozen. These ices are the best barometers of climatic disturbances, since, precisely, it is ice! If temperatures rise, they shrink. But they are also very sensitive to changes in precipitation, like snow: the more snow, the happier the glaciers, the less snow, the more they shrink.
The first reason for the importance of ice is the role it plays in stabilizing the climate. Today, 10% of the land surface on Earth is covered in ice. It’s huge, I think it’s hard to imagine what it means. And these white surfaces act a bit like a mirror: they have this ability to reflect the sun’s rays in the direction of space, so it keeps these mountain spaces and these polar regions cold. And having cold poles and high cold mountains stabilizes the climate everywhere on Earth. When we talk about the fact that the Arctic reacts very quickly to climate change, that the Arctic is warming up, it is disturbing the climate right up to us in France.
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This loss of ice also has other consequences, for example rising waters, or consequences on the supply of drinking water…
This ice is our largest reserve of drinking water on Earth. When we think of the Himalayan glaciers, we are really talking about a water tower. Billions of people depend on water from the glaciers throughout the year, especially outside the monsoon period. Today, if we melted all the ice on Earth, the level of the oceans would rise by 65 meters. It is monumental. Between 0 and 10 meters of altitude on the coasts on Earth, there are 700 million people! With very active cities, flourishing economic areas. So even if we lose a very small part of this ice present on the planet, the consequences will be significant.
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