Glaciers Need Closer Watch in Poor Countries - UNEP
SWITZERLAND: September 2, 2008
GENEVA - Scientists are not paying enough attention to glacial melting in
the Andes, the Himalayas and peaks in other developing countries, a United
Nations-backed report found on Monday.
Experts from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Glacier
Monitoring Service (WGMS) said while there has been excellent monitoring of
glacial trends in Europe and North America, ice fields in Central Asia and
the tropics have been largely overlooked.
This is a major concern given that shrinking and thinning glaciers -- a
phenomenon linked to climate change -- could put freshwater supplies at risk
for hundreds of millions of people, authors Peter Gilruth and Wilfried
Haeberli said.
"Data gaps exist in some vulnerable parts of the globe undermining the
ability to provide precise early warning for countries and populations at
risk," they concluded.
Their report, released at a meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), a UN scientific body, called for more investment in
high-tech monitoring tools for Central Asia, South America, East Africa and
in Papua New Guinea.
The IPCC has said global warming, stoked by the burning of fossil fuels such
as oil, will trigger more droughts, floods, heatwaves, and severe storms,
and cause sea levels to rise as glaciers and polar ice caps melt.
According to the UNEP and WGMS study, the average melting rate of mountain
glaciers has doubled since the turn of the millennium, with record losses
seen in 2006 at several sites.
If governments fail to agree to deep emissions cuts when they negotiate a
successor deal to the Kyoto Protocol next year in Copenhagen, the authors
said it was possible that glaciers may disappear completely from many
mountain ranges this century. (Reporting by Laura MacInnis, editing by Sam
Cage and Mary Gabriel)
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
|