Quote:
The first globally complete glacier inventory has been created
Thanks to the efforts of an international group of scientists – one of them is Tobias Bolch from Technische Universität Dresden, Germany - who have mapped all of the world's glaciers, glaciologists can now study with unprecedented accuracy the impacts of a changing climate on glaciers worldwide, and determine their total extent and volume on a glacier-by-glacier basis. Overall, glaciers cover an area of about 730,000 km2 and have a volume of about 170,000 km3. The scientists found nearly 200,000 of them, but they say that this is the least important result of the mapping exercise as the number constantly changes due to disappearing small and fragmenting larger glaciers. More importantly, each glacier in the new inventory is represented by a computer-readable outline, making precise modelling of glacier–climate interactions much easier.
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Regions 1 (Alaska) and 2 (Western Canada, and PNW) are surprisingly prominent globally. I don't know how important glaciers are locally for freshwater, tourism, and microclimates but I am sure that the Alps are missing what they had until recently, and water stressed regions would love to switch places because pumping groundwater or desalination is too expensive long before a water supply disappears.
How do you think this or other regional reserves of untouched nature will guide development locally in the world of 2100?
Air/water/plants/animals/land -- not just the typically valuable oil/gas/lumber/minerals