Earth's glaciers are melting at a starling rate of 390 billion tons of snow and ice per year because of climate change, according to a new study. Nature International Journal of Science published its findings Monday, which includes a tally of the biggest losses worldwide—the largest being the Alaskan glaciers followed by South American ice fields and the Arctic glaciers. “Over 30 years, suddenly almost all regions started losing mass at the same time,” said the study’s lead author, Michael Zemp of the University of Zurich, who projects that glaciers in some mountain ranges will completely melt by the end of the century. “That’s clearly climate change if you look at the global picture.” The study also reported that sea levels have risen about inch in 50 years due to the vanishing dense mounds of ice, noting that “the present glacier mass loss... accounts for 25 to 30 per cent of the total observed sea-level rise.”
