(dr) Sam Herreid
Glaciers are (still) colder than the air around them. But global warming does not bring good news for these mega ice blocks.
Something unexpected is happening to glaciers. Even with global warming, these huge masses of ice are cooling the air around them.
What happens, explains , is that many of these glaciers are staying colder than the air around themwhich creates its own little cold zones.
A new one published in Nature this month concluded that glaciers spread across the world are likely to reach their peak cooling power at a certain point in the next 10 to 15 years. After that, the ice will no longer be able to resist the warming trend. And that’s when the glaciers will start to warm.
One of the biggest examples of this cooling are large mountains, such as the Himalayas.
“By examining the data carefullywe understand that the glaciers were reacting to the warming of the air in the summer, intensifying the temperature exchange at the surface“, said Francesca Pellicciotti, one of the study’s authors.
Researchers found that glacier surfaces warm about 0.83 degrees Celsius for every 1 degree of warming in the surrounding air. This gap, called “decoupling“, is what allows glaciers to cool temporarily.
“These changes cool large chunks of air, which then slide downhill under the action of gravity in the form of “katabatic winds”explains Earth. A phenomenon that seems strange, but which ultimately has an obvious physical basis.
“Knowing that the self-cooling of glaciers will continue for some time can give us some extra time to optimize our water management plans in the coming decades,” said investigator Thomas Shaw.
And he assures: “We have to accept the already compromised ice loss and concentrate all our efforts on limit further climate warming, rather than resorting to ineffective geoengineering strategies like seeding clouds or capping glaciers. They’re like putting an expensive bandage on a gunshot wound.”
