Global Warming

Global warming is shrinking glaciers faster than thought

Earth's glaciers are melting much faster than scientists thought. A new study shows they are losing 369 billion tons of snow and ice each year, more than half of that in North America.

The most comprehensive measurement of glaciers worldwide found that thousands of inland masses of snow compressed into ice are shrinking 18 percent faster than an international panel of scientists calculated in 2013.

The world's glaciers are shrinking five times faster now than they were in the 1960s. Their melt is accelerating due to global warming, and adding more water to already rising seas, the study found.

The glaciers shrinking fastest are in central Europe, the Caucasus region, western Canada, the U.S. Lower 48 states, New Zealand and near the tropics. Glaciers in these places on average are losing more than 1 percent of their mass each year, according to a study in Monday's journal Nature. In these regions, at the current glacier loss rate, the glaciers will not survive the century.

Since 1961, the world has lost 10.6 trillion tons of ice and snow (9.6 trillion metric tons), the study found. That's enough to cover the lower 48 U.S. states in about 4 feet of ice.

Glaciers grow in winter and shrink in summer, but as the Earth has warmed, they are growing less and shrinking more. Warmer summer temperatures are the main reason glaciers are shrinking faster.