🔗 Share this article

Deep in California’s Sierra mountain range, enormous glaciers are vanishing and projected to dissolve completely by the start of the next century, leaving summits without glaciers for the first time in human history, recent studies has discovered.

Age-Old Origins of Sierra Nevada Glaciers

The range's ice sheets are more ancient than earlier understood, dating back tens of thousands of years, with a few as ancient as the last ice age, according to a report released recently.

“Our pieced-together ice age record indicates that a future glacier-free Sierra Nevada is unprecedented in the history of humankind since documented peopling of the Americas around twenty thousand years ago,” the study states.

Global Risk to Glaciers

Ice masses globally are under threat during the climate crisis. A study released in May of this year determined that nearly 40% of glaciers are doomed to melt because of climate warming. If such heating rises by 2.7 degrees Celsius, which the world is currently on course for, as up to 75% will vanish, causing sea level rise and large-scale relocation.

Across the Western United States, ice formations have diminished substantially since they were first documented in the 1800s, according to the article.

Concentration on Key Ice Bodies

The recent study centers on several Sierra Nevada glacial masses – the Palisade, Lyell, Maclure and Conness glaciers – that are among the biggest and likely oldest in the range. Their longevity during climate warming makes them “indicators” for examining glacier disappearance in the west, the study notes.

Study Techniques and Results

Researchers examined newly uncovered base rock around the ice formations and collected specimens to ascertain how extensively the region was covered by glacial ice. They found that the glaciers have enveloped large areas of the range for much longer than earlier believed – since prior to people inhabited North America.

California’s glaciers reached their maximum positions as long ago as 30,000 years ago, the study's researchers wrote, and a particular of the glaciers experts studied is thought to have grown seven thousand years ago, earlier than once thought. The loss of glaciers, for the first time in human history, demonstrates the dramatic impacts of the climate change, a researcher of the study said.

Ecological and Representational Impact

“We’ll be the initial ones to see the ice-free peaks,” said Andrew Jones, the principal investigator. “This has ecological ramifications for plants and animals. And it’s a representational decline. Global warming is very abstract, but these glaciers are concrete. They’re iconic features of the American West.”