Glaciers melt the worldover
The rapidly retreating margin of Columbia Glacier, as seen from the air above iceberg-riddled Columbia Bay, Prince William Sound, Alaska. Exposed bedrock on the valley margins shows that the glacier has thinned by more than 400 meters since the early 1980s.
A neglected contributor to sealevel rise is glacier melts, says a paper in this week's Science
Glaciers Dominate Eustatic Sea-Level Rise in the 21st Century
Ice loss to the sea currently accounts for virtually all of the sea-level rise that is not attributable to ocean warming, and about 60% of the ice loss is from glaciers and ice caps rather than from the two ice sheets. The contribution of these smaller glaciers has accelerated over the past decade, in part due to marked thinning and retreat of marine-terminating glaciers associated with a dynamic instability that is generally not considered in mass-balance and climate modeling. This acceleration of glacier melt may cause 0.1 to 0.25 meter of additional sea-level rise by 2100.
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