Glaciers around the world are retreating at unprecedented rates as temperatures rise due to anthropo

Glaciers around the world are retreating at unprecedented rates as temperatures rise due to anthropogenic climate change. The Blomstrandbreen glacier, located in the Svalbard Archipelago (595km north of Norway), is no different.Blomstrandbreen glacier has retreated over two kilometres since 1928, the year in which this sepia coloured photo was taken. Since the 1960s, the rate of the retreat has accelerated to 35m/year and has increased even further in the last decade.Often, these numerical depictions of change don’t evoke the sense of enormity that they represent. But pictures speak a thousand words. In 2002, Christian Aslund took this colour image of Blomstrandbreen glacier mimicking the positioning of the original 1928 image- the shocking difference speaks for itself.During the time between the two sets of photos, the Earth’s atmosphere had warmed by a little less than 1° C (1.8° F), and the oceans had in turn risen by about 15 centimetres - a testament to how small changes in global temperatures can have catastrophic consequences both locally and globally.The unprecedented rate of glacial melt is a canary in a coal mine and unfortunately that canary stopped chirping years ago.-JeanSee the original Greenpeace press release here: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/glaciers-melt-before-our-eyes/ -- source link
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