Glaciers at Yellowstone and Yosemite National Park on track to disappear in the next 30 years, report says

CNN — 

The climate crisis is touching nearly every region of the world. But perhaps one of the most visible indicators of its impact is its effect on Earth’s iconic glaciers, a major source of freshwater supply. Glaciers have been melting at a breakneck pace in recent decades, leading to around 20% of global sea level rise since 2000.

Now researchers at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization have found that glaciers in one-third of the planet’s most beautiful parks and protected areas are set to disappear by 2050 – whether or not global warming is slowed.

How the climate crisis is forever changing our national parks

Among the glaciers on the brink of vanishing at World Heritage sites are those in two of the most visited and most beloved parks in the United States – Yellowstone National Park, which saw unprecedented flooding earlier this year, and Yosemite National Park.

The list also includes some of the largest and most iconic glaciers in Central Asia and Europe as well as the last remaining glaciers in Africa, namely Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro.

Glaciers at World Heritage sites shed around 58 billion tons of ice each year, UNESCO reports, which is equivalent to the total volume of water used annually in France and Spain combined. And these glaciers have already contributed nearly 5% of global sea level rise in the last 20 years.

The study provides the first global assessment of both the current and future scenario of glaciers in World Heritage sites, according to Tales Carvalho Resende, project officer at UNESCO’s natural heritage unit and author of the report.

“This report brings a very powerful message in the sense that World Heritage Sites are iconic places – places that are extremely important for humanity, but especially for local communities and Indigenous peoples,” Resende told CNN. “Ice loss and glacial retreat is accelerating, so this sends an alarming message.

Only by limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels can we save glaciers at the other two-thirds of these parks, scientists report – a climate target that recent reports say the world is far from achieving. The global average temperature has already risen around 1.2 degrees since the industrial revolution.

Glaciers cover around 10% of land, providing fresh water supply for households, agriculture and industry downstream. Under normal conditions, they take as long as a millennium to fully form; each year, they gain mass through snow or rain, and lose mass by melting in the summer.