Glacial Retreat

Climate change has resulted in the accelerated melting of glaciers across the world. This melting is primarily caused by rising global temperatures (see Temperature Changes) caused by human activities . Glaciers are important for reflecting the sun’s heat, making the planet cooler. The loss of glaciers reduces the planet’s capacity to reflect this heat, further accelerating global warming. Melting glaciers also contribute to rising global sea levels (see Sea Level Rise).

Dataset

The World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) is an organization that collects and shares data on the mass, volume, and dimensions of glaciers over time, as well as the distribution of perennial surface ice in space. WGMS is a service of the following global organizations: the International Association of the Cryospheric Sciences of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IACS, IUGG) and the World Data System of the International Science Council (ISC) . The raw data used was obtained from the Fluctuations of Glaciers Database on the WGMS website , with the particular dataset entitled “changes.csv” from the 2023 version. This file includes data on the change in glacier thickness, area, and volume, primarily from geodetic surveys.

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This scatterplot shows the change in glacier volume by year of study, at and after 1990 with some very large negative extreme values removed. Within each year, each point represents a different glacier. It is evident that there are more reductions in glacier volume than there are increases for most years, with these negative changes becoming larger with increasing years.

Physical data for the glacier RGI60-13.1 in a 2004 survey (some columns removed)

NAME	WGMS_ID	SURVEY_ID	YEAR	SURVEY_DATE	THICKNESS_CHG	VOLUME_CHANGE	INVESTIGATOR	SPONS_AGENCY	REFERENCE
RGI60-13.10763	156232	808792	2004	20041231	-1535	-1550	Romain Hugonnet	LEGOS, Université Toulouse, France; VAW, ETH Zürich, Switzerland.	Hugonnet et al. (2021); Nature, 592, 726-731 p.