A supercomputer at the University of Northern British Columbia has helped an international team of researchers discover that the rate of mass loss from Earth’s glaciers is accelerating.
The computer, which is jointly funded by UNBC and the Hakai Institute constructed digital elevation models based on more than 440,000 satellite images.
The computations are part of a paper publish in the April 29 issue of Nature that found between 2000 and 2004 glaciers lost 227 gigatonnes of ice per year, then in 2015 and 2019 that rate increased to 298 gigatonnes. A gigatonne is equivalent to one billion tonnes.
Researchers, led by ETH Zurich and University of Toulouse doctoral student Romain Hugonnet, measured elevation change from all of Earth’s glaciers.
The international team of researchers found that over the last 20 years, glaciers mass loss from North American glaciers represented about one-half of the global total with one-quarter coming from glaciers in central and southern B.C.
Photo provided by UNBC
