University Of Innsbruck News

Man-made Warming the Main Cause of Glacier Retreat -Study

Man-made greenhouse gas emissions have become the dominant cause of melting in glaciers from the Alps to the Andes that is raising world sea levels, a study said on Thursday. Human emissions accounted for an estimated 69 percent of loss of ice from glaciers from 1991-2010, overtaking natural climate variations that had been the main driver of a retreat since the mid-19th century, researchers wrote in the journal Science. Until now, scientists have struggled to quantify the impact of human behaviour on glaciers because the frozen rivers of ice take decades…