Glacier melt -- causes, consequences, and innovations

Dava Castillo in All Voices: Glaciers are the world’s largest reservoir of fresh water, holding approximately 75% of the world’s fresh water. Over the past century, most of the world’s mountain glaciers and the ice sheets in both Greenland and Antarctica have lost mass. But glacier melt is not limited to these areas. Glaciers are located on every continent, except Australia and they are all receding with severe consequences.

In December 2010, 193 countries met in Cancun for climate talks and developed The United Nations Cancun Adaptation Framework. They concluded climate change is real and unavoidable, and confronting it with blending climate science and technology, indigenous community’s adaptive skills, engineering and risk management is the future. Like blending families, this process takes a fair amount of cooperation, compromise and conversation. Peru is taking the warnings seriously with a proactive approach for a 20-30 year plan.

…Climate change in the last sixty years has impacted high mountain glaciers in places like the Andes in Peru and The Himalayas, and many of the large glaciers melted rapidly, possibly from global warming, creating large glacier lakes. Over the years these lakes have been increasing in accumulation of water resulting in sudden discharges of large volumes of water and debris causing flooding on lowlands. This is called Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF). These outbursts are disastrous to life and property at the lower elevations that become inundated causing deaths, destruction of forest, farms and costly mountain infrastructure.

…In May of this year Peru's national water authority (ANA) announced plans to implement a program to mitigate the effects of glacial melting requiring an investment of 500 million dollars U.S., according to its director Carlos Pagador. The country has seen glaciers in many areas reduced by 35%, with glaciers in some areas shrinking by up to 65%, Pagador told state news agency Andina….

Paved road to the Pastoruri snowy mountain (Ancash-Perú), shot by Dtarazona, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license