Scientists shocked by acceleration of melting crisis: 'We are surprised by the rate'
From the towering peaks of the Himalayas to the frozen shores of Alaska, the world's ice is vanishing at an alarming rate — and it's affecting more than just the landscape.
Scientists estimate that 15 million people are at risk of experiencing catastrophic flooding as glacial lakes swell and burst. In Bhutan, for example, authorities are relocating entire communities to protect them from deadly glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs).
Beyond the mountains, ice loss is transforming coastlines, disrupting food sources, and threatening homes. Rising seas, fueled by Antarctic ice sheet melt, are increasing flood risks for coastal cities. In the Arctic, diminishing sea ice is eroding land and destabilizing communities, while warming waters endanger entire ecosystems, including crucial fisheries.
"We are surprised by the rate at which climate change is impacting the icy parts of the world," said Doug MacAyeal, a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, in a recent article from the Natural Resources Defense Council. "But I'm not going to say that it doesn't make sense. … Sadly, it is fully understandable."
Melting ice doesn't just mean rising sea levels — it can reshape life as we know it. In mountain regions, receding glaciers can trigger landslides, floods, and water shortages. The Cordillera Blanca in Peru, for instance, has seen its glacial lakes grow dramatically, leading to competition over water between local farmers and hydroelectric companies.
In the Arctic, communities that have relied on stable ice for generations are now struggling due to crumbling infrastructure and disrupted food storage systems. Warmer temperatures have also contributed to the decline of key species, like snow crabs, leading to economic turmoil for fishing communities.
Even in the Great Lakes region, declining ice cover is exposing shorelines to increased erosion and stronger storms, while changing lake conditions impact fish populations and water quality.
Scientists warn that the situation is accelerating, and we may be approaching irreversible tipping points. The collapse of Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier — often dubbed the "Doomsday Glacier" — could trigger rapid sea level rise, affecting millions in coastal cities worldwide.
As Bryan Mroczka said in 2024 of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's reporting that Great Lakes ice coverage had hit historic lows: "We've crossed a threshold."
Do you think your city has good air quality?
Definitely
Somewhat
Depends on the time of year
Not at all
Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.
While these challenges are daunting, solutions are emerging. Bhutan is taking proactive steps by relocating at-risk communities and reinforcing glacial lake dams. In the Arctic, some villages are implementing coastal protections, while others explore managed retreat to safer ground.
On a broader scale, global efforts to curb pollution and transition to cleaner energy sources are critical to slowing ice melt. Reducing reliance on dirty energy like coal and oil can lessen heat-trapping pollution, helping to stabilize the climate.
At the individual level, small actions can contribute to big change. Cutting back on energy use, supporting policies that protect natural landscapes, and reducing food waste can all help lessen the strain on our planet. Even simple swaps — like switching to an energy-efficient heat pump or using public transportation — can make a difference.
The ice is melting faster than ever, but there's still time to act. Every step we take toward a cleaner, more sustainable world helps protect the people, ecosystems, and communities that depend on these frozen landscapes.
Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
Satellite streaks block out the Arctic sky
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. From intelligence gathering to internet usage to navigation, satellites are used daily across the globe. However, their activity is causing serious issues. In February, a team of researchers from Western University in Canada, in collaboration with the organization Defense Research and Development Canada, trekked into the high Arctic to try to measure the activity of satellites orbiting across the pole. Using 14 low-cost cameras, the researchers were able to track satellites passing overhead on the evening of Feb. 22, 2025, compiling them into a long-exposure image to show the total activity for the evening. Each streak of white in the image shows the satellite's path in the sky. Their system was inspired by meteor tracking, with cameras pointed in various angles to catch the entire night sky. This photo was taken in Eureka, in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. This novel satellite system has allowed the researchers to produce the first ever full year of satellite tracking data over Canada, according to Western University. The system is currently deployed at four sites across Canada to monitor satellite activity including: Eureka, Osoyoos, British Columbia, and Lucky Lake, Saskatchewan. With the 14-camera setup, the researchers could track objects in the sky over 11.8 inches (30 cm) in size. To date, the system has found over 17,000 unique satellites and clocked nearly half a billion observations, according to the press release. While the system gives a more detailed way to monitor satellite activity, it also reveals just how full our skies are with these devices. Not only are satellites chemically polluting our atmosphere with heavy metals, but they are becoming a growing issue for astronomers trying to look deep into our universe. With more launches planned to add new satellites, the question to be asked is: when will the sky be too full? You can read more about Earth's satellite activity and growing satellite pollution problem.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Researchers call for urgent exploration of methods to cool Earth
It is already obvious that some governments are not acting fast enough to keep the planet's temperature from rising dangerously. While it is essential to continue to concentrate on reducing methane and carbon dioxide emissions as quickly as possible, other methods of cooling the planet need to be urgently explored, according to academics at the University of Cambridge's engineering department. Related: UK scientists to launch outdoor geoengineering experiments One of the problems is that many of the ideas put forward so far, including injecting sulphates into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight back into space, could do more harm than good. This is because sulphates cause acid rain and interfere with rainfall patterns. To avoid controversy researchers are experimenting with alternatives to sulphates, substances that reflect sunlight but are benign. They will hoist them into the stratosphere using weather balloons then recover them to see what changes this exposure causes. No materials will be released but their cooling effect and whether they could otherwise be harmless can be gauged. Other ideas like drilling holes in the Arctic ice in the winter and pumping seawater over existing ice floes in below freezing air temperatures to thicken them are also being tried, along with spraying seawater to form clouds over the ocean, also to reflect sunlight. If these ideas are otherwise harmless, and work, they might yet save us.
Miami Herald
2 days ago
- Miami Herald
As the ocean warms, a new study found it's also changing color
For thousands of years, writers have come up with increasingly creative ways to describe the 'wine-dark sea.' But a new study suggests that modern poets may be faced with a slightly different palette. A study published Thursday in the journal Science found that the ocean is changing color as it warms. By analyzing satellite data from 2009 to 2022, researchers from Duke University and the Georgia Institute of Technology noticed that waters near the equator were getting greener, while areas near the poles were turning bluer. Lead author Haipeng Zhou calls it 'this greener greens or bluer blues phenomenon.' The culprit, the paper suggests, is the teeny tiny plant-like creatures that form the building blocks of the marine food web — phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are filled with a green pigment called chlorophyll that allows them to absorb energy from sunlight through photosynthesis. As waters near the equator warm, they're less hospitable to the microscopic critters, so the water appears bluer. At the poles, the colder water is far more nutrient-dense, so there's lots more phytoplankton to go around, giving the waters a rich, blue tinge. It's not a new phenomenon. There's a reason the Caribbean is known as the land of dazzling turquoise waters, while Arctic waters are a dark navy contrast to the ivory ice floes around them. But Zhou, who began the research at Duke University and completed it as a postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Tech, found that as the ocean warms, this phenomenon is getting stronger. Their study only looked at the open ocean, not coastal waters. Near the coast, there are plenty of complicating factors that make it hard to clearly point to phytoplankton as the main cause of color changes, like dirt and sand floating in the water, shifting winds, pollution or even seagrass die off. To understand the concentrations of phytoplankton, the research team relied on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration database made up of samples scooped from various research cruises all over the world. This database, plus satellite imagery, helped show the color shift in different regions of the ocean. The changing levels of phytoplankton could be bad news for fish in the tropics, or for communities that rely on those fish. But it could also be a boon for their northern and southern cousins. 'We all know that phytoplankton is the bottom of the food chain. Any impact on phytoplankton will have impacts on its predators,' Zhou said. Phytoplankton need sun and nutrients to flourish, but when the ocean warms, the individual layers that make up the sea grow more stratified, so it's harder for phytoplankton to float up and down the water column to access the same light and nutrients they're used to, he said. So while scientists can clearly say that warmer waters lead to fewer phytoplankton, and they know that climate change is one of the main reasons the oceans are heating up, it's not clear if climate change is the reason for the color shift. 'We need longer records, 30 years, 40 years, to make us more confident whether it is linked to climate change or global variability,' Zhou said. The study only looked at about 20 years of data, which Zhou said is enough to confidently say that something has changed, but not long enough to know what caused that change. Other factors can and do affect water temperature, like the shift in trade winds over the Atlantic that led to a coral-killing marine heat wave in 2023. 'The study period was too short to rule out the influence of recurring climate phenomena such as El Niño,' wrote co-author Susan Lozier, Dean of the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech, in a statement. However, Zhou added, more research may very well find that this color-shifting trend continues into the future as human-caused climate change continues to heat up the oceans. 'The temperature of the water is rising. While there's no evidence showing that this progress will slow down, it's very likely we'll have warmer waters in the future, which means we'll have a continuous impact on the ocean ecosystem.'
