How much are the world’s glaciers melting by?
There is no denying that glaciers are melting at an increasingly fast rate. Figures released by the World Glacier Monitoring Service at the University of Zurich in Switzerland for 2007 claimed an average loss of ice thickness of 0.67 metre water equivalent (mwe), with some glaciers in the Alps losing as much as 2.5 mwe. Metre Water Equivalent is the method used by glaciologists as a standardized unit for measuring the density change of ice: one metre of ice thickness is equal to about 0.9 mwe. In Greenland, researchers reported that the amount of ice melting was nearly three times faster in the summer of 2008 than it had been in 2007. Researchers from Ohio State University estimated that the amount of ice lost from Greenland’s glaciers in 2008 would cover an area twice the size of Manhattan. A 2002 study claimed that Alaska’s glaciers are losing as much as 1.8 metres of ice a year, more than twice the levels recorded in the 1950s. Some glaciologists believe that glaciers are losing 22
