🔗 Share this article

Deep in the state of Sierra Nevada, enormous glaciers are vanishing and expected to dissolve completely by the start of the next century, resulting in ice-free peaks for the first time in human history, recent studies has found.

Age-Old Origins of Sierra Range Glaciers

The mountain range’s ice sheets are more ancient than previously known, tracing back many thousands of years, with some as ancient as the most recent glacial period, according to a report released recently.

“Our reconstructed ice age record indicates that a future ice-free Sierra Nevada is unprecedented in human history since known settlement of the Americas around twenty thousand years ago,” the study declares.

Worldwide Threat to Ice Formations

Glaciers around the world are under threat during the climate crisis. A study published in May of this year found that nearly 40% of glaciers are doomed to thaw because of climate warming. If this warming rises by 2.7C, which the world is currently on course for, as many as 75% will disappear, leading to sea level rise and large-scale relocation.

Across the Western United States, glaciers have shrunk substantially since they were initially recorded in the 1800s, according to the article.

Focus on Key Ice Bodies

The recent study centers on four Sierra Nevada glacial masses – the Conness, Maclure, Lyell and Palisade ice sheets – that are among the biggest and probably oldest in the mountain chain. Their durability during global heating makes them “indicators” for examining glacier disappearance in the west, the study states.

Research Methods and Findings

Researchers looked at recently exposed base rock around the glaciers and collected specimens to determine how extensively the region was blanketed by glacial ice. They determined that the ice masses have covered swaths of the range for much longer than earlier believed – since prior to people inhabited North America.

California’s glaciers reached their peak extents as long ago as thirty thousand years ago, the article’s authors wrote, and a particular of the glaciers researchers looked at is believed to have expanded 7,000 years ago, sooner than previously believed. The loss of ice formations, for the first time in human history, demonstrates the dramatic effects of the climate crisis, a researcher of the study said.

Environmental and Representational Impact

“We’ll be the first to witness the glacier-less summits,” said Andrew Jones, the study’s lead author. “This has environmental implications for plants and animals. And it’s a representational decline. Global warming is highly intangible, but these ice masses are concrete. They’re iconic features of the American West.”