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| Description |
Location |
Measured Loss |
| Arctic Sea Ice |
Arctic Ocean |
September ice area declined by 7.8 percent per decade between 1953 and 2006. In 2007 there was a record low in summer sea ice extent, 23 percent below the previous 2005 record. Summers could be ice-free in the Arctic Ocean by 2030. |
| Greenland Ice Sheet |
Greenland |
Mean melt extent on the Greenland ice sheet in 2007 was the largest in the 29 years that records have been kept, 10 percent greater than the previous 2005 record. Mass lost from the ice sheet more than doubled between 1996 and 2005. |
| Permafrost |
Arctic |
Arctic permafrost has warmed by up to 2 degrees Celsius in recent decades. Methane emissions from thawing permafrost in Northern Siberia increased an estimated 58 percent between 1974 and 2000. |
| Antarctic Ice Sheets |
Antarctica |
The Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an average rate of 196 billion tons a year, mostly from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Mass lost from ice melting has not been offset by increased snowfall in the interior, as had been predicted by climate models. |
| Pine Island Bay |
West Antarctica |
Glaciers feeding into Pine Island Bay accelerated 120 percent between 1996 and 2006. |
| Larsen B Ice Shelf |
Antarctic Peninsula |
Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves have retreated by an average of 300 square kilometers each year since 1980. Since the collapse of the 3,250-cubic kilometer Larsen B Ice Shelf in 2002, local glaciers have been moving two to six times faster, releasing more ice into the sea. |
| Gangotri Glacier |
Himalayas, South Asia |
The Gangotri Glacier, which provides up to 70 percent of the water in the Ganges is retreating more than 35 meters per year, twice as fast as 20 years ago. It could disappear by 2030. |
| Pamirs |
Central Asia |
Glaciers have shrunk between 30 and 50 percent since 1930. |
| Caucasus Mountains |
Russia |
Glacial volume declined by 50 percent in the twentieth century. |
| Alps |
Western Europe |
Alpine glaciers in the Tyrol Province, Austria are retreating an average of 3 percent a year. Alpine glaciers are likely to contain only half their 1970s volume by 2025, dwindling to 5 percent by the end of the century. |
| Kilimanjaro |
Tanzania |
Ice fields on Africa’s highest mountain shrank by 80 percent over the past century, with 33 percent from 1989 to 2000 alone. |
| Alaskan Glaciers |
Alaska, United States |
1,987 out of 2,000 glaciers in southeast Alaska are retreating. Since the mid-1990s, Alaskan glaciers have been thinning by 1.8 meters a year, over three times as fast as during the preceding 40 years. |
| Glacier National Park |
Rocky Mtns., United States |
Since 1910, more than two thirds of its glaciers and about 75 percent of glacier area has disappeared. Remaining glaciers may melt completely by 2030. |
| Andes |
Peru and Bolivia |
Glaciers lost a third of their area between the 1970s and 2006. The Quelccaya Glacier in Peru is retreating as fast as a foot a day. |
| Chacaltaya Glacier |
Bolivia |
Estimated to be only 2 percent of its former size. It lost 80 percent of its mass in the last 15 years and may disappear completely by 2010. |
| Southern Alps |
New Zealand |
Glaciers in New Zealand have lost an estimated 49 percent of their area and 61 percent of their volume since the mid-nineteenth century. |
| Carstensz and West Meren Glaciers |
Papua Province, Indonesia |
Carstensz shrunk by 80 percent between 1942 and 2000. West Meren disappeared entirely in the late 1990s after a retreat of more than 2,600 meters since the first survey in 1936. |
| Source: Compiled by Earth Policy Institute, January 2008, from sources including WWF, Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, UNEP, IPCC, NASA, National Snow and Ice Data Center, and other scientific literature. |
