Climate Change On Earth's Glaciers

As the Earth is heating from climate change, it is causing effects on Earth’s glaciers. Glaciers around the whole world have been slowly melting away sense the early 1980’s. There may be a large amount of ice in the world with the majority of drinking water in the world is in glaciers and ice caps, we have been neglecting to notice that it is quickly melting away. There has been evidence that the world is slowly increasing in temperature due to the carbon dioxide levels of the atmosphere. Since the 1880’s, the global temperature was calculated to be 13.7°C (56.71°F), and rose to be over 14.5°C (58°F) (Osborn). If the global temperature continues to rise at its current amount per year, the world could see an increase of about 2°C (3.6°F) (Osborn) resulting in devastating effects. Due to the sudden changes (geologically time speaking) in the temperature there have been some already observable effects in the climate. The Arctic has seen major changes in the amount of ice present in its oceans as well as changes in the icy composition of the Antarctic.

The Tibetan plateau has the largest amount of ice outside of the Polar Regions, with nearly 37,000 glaciers on just the Chinese side of it. With the increase in the temperatures the glaciers have been melting at a very vast rate, according to climatologists and glaciologists, with the rate that the glaciers are absorbing and reflecting the sunlight, they expect that by 2050 we could see up to a forty percent decrease in the size of some of these glaciers. With the retreating of the glaciers they are leaving behind sediment loads. One of the glaciers known as the Ming-Yong glacier is one of the most well known and most visited glaciers in the region, it is also a glacier that has been