麻豆社

A study of all the world's glaciers found that nearly half of them will melt by the end of the century - even if the world meets its most ambitious global warming target.

Professor Regine Hock of the University of Oslo and University of Alaska Fairbanks, a co-author of the study, says
"even if global warming is kept to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we calculated that the mass loss of the glaciers in the world will lose about 26% of their mass and that about half of the glaciers in the world will disappear completely".

She added that keeping glaciers frozen is crucial for human existence: "the more we mitigate climate change, the more ice we can keep on land and that's important for sea levels, stream flows and many, many other things".

(Photo: Parts of the Rhone Glacier are covered with blankets to protect the ice against melting. Credit: Reuters)