🔗 Share this article

Far in California’s Sierra Nevada, massive glaciers are disappearing and projected to melt away entirely by the beginning of the next century, resulting in ice-free peaks for the first time in recorded human existence, recent studies has found.

Age-Old Origins of Sierra Nevada Ice Masses

The mountain range’s glaciers are more ancient than earlier understood, tracing back many thousands of years, with a few as ancient as the last ice age, according to a report published recently.

“Our pieced-together ice age record indicates that a future glacier-free Sierra Nevada is without precedent in human history since documented settlement of the Americas around twenty thousand years ago,” the study declares.

Worldwide Risk to Glaciers

Glaciers globally are at risk amid the climate crisis. A research released in the month of May of this year found that almost forty percent of glaciers are destined to thaw because of global heating. If this warming increases by 2.7 degrees Celsius, which the world is currently on course for, as up to 75% will vanish, leading to ocean level increase and mass displacement.

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

Concentration on Key Glaciers

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

Study Techniques and Results

Scientists looked at recently exposed bedrock around the ice formations and collected specimens to ascertain how long the area was covered by glacial ice. They determined that the glaciers have covered large areas of the range for far longer than previously known – since before people inhabited North America.

California’s glaciers attained their maximum positions as long ago as thirty thousand years ago, the study's researchers wrote, and one of the glaciers experts studied is believed to have expanded 7,000 years ago, earlier than once thought. The loss of ice formations, for the first time in recorded history, shows the dramatic impacts of the climate change, one author of the investigation said.

Ecological and Representational Impact

“We’ll be the first to witness the glacier-less summits,” said Andrew Jones, the principal investigator. “This has environmental implications for flora and fauna. And it’s a representational decline. Global warming is very abstract, but these glaciers are concrete. They’re iconic features of the American West.”