| SELECTED EXAMPLES OF ICE MELT AROUND THE WORLD |
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| Name |
Location |
Measured Loss |
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| Arctic Sea Ice |
Arctic Ocean |
Year-round ice area declined by 9 percent per decade from 1978 to 2003. The smallest summer ice extents in recorded history all occurred in the past three years (15 percent below average in 2002, 12 percent in 2003, and 13 percent in 2004). Summers could be ice free by the end of the century. |
| Greenland Ice Sheet |
Greenland |
Greenland's melt region expanded by 17 percent between 1992 and 2002. Annual ice loss form Greenland is sufficient to raise the global sea level by an average of 0.13 millimeters per year. |
| Permafrost |
Arctic |
Arctic permafrost has warmed by up to 2 degrees Celsius in recent decades. About 15 percent of the Arctic tundra has already been lost since the 1970s. |
| Amundsen Sea |
West Antarctica |
Glaciers feeding into the Amundsen Sea are discharging enough ice and water to raise sea levels more than 0.2 millimeters per year. |
| 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 2-6 times faster, releasing more ice into the sea. |
| Mt. Everest |
Himalayas, South Asia |
Glaciers on Mt. Everest retreated some 5 kilometers in the past 50 years. |
| Tien Shan Mountains |
Central Asia |
Glaciers have shrunk by 30 percent since 1955, losing up to 2 cubic kilometers of ice per year. |
| Caucasus Mountains |
Russia |
Glacial volume has declined by 50 percent in the past century. |
| Alps |
Western Europe |
Alpine glaciers thinned at an average rate of 0.65 meters per year from 1980 to 2000. The record loss of 1.6 meters in 1998 was blown away by 3 meters of average thinning from the extreme heat of 2003. 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. The ice cap may disappear completely by 2015. |
| 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. |
| Chacaltaya Glacier |
Bolivia |
Estimated to be only 2 percent of its former size. It lost two-thirds of its mass in the 1990s alone, and may disappear completely by 2010. |
| Patagonia Icefields |
Chile and Argentina |
From 1968 to 2000, lost ice at a rate equivalent to a sea level rise of 0.042 mm per year. Average thinning rates more than doubled that amount from 1995 to 2000. |
| Carstensz & 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 its first survey in 1936. |
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| Source: Compiled by Danielle Murray, Earth Policy Institute, February 2005, from sources including Worldwatch Institute, WWF, Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, NASA, National Snow and Ice Data Center. |
