The melting affect millions of people

Hundreds of millions of people will be affected by melting glaciers and reduced snow-covered as a result of climate change, the Programmed has warned the UN Environment Programmed (UNEP) in a new report.

“Only the loss of snow and glaciers in the mountains of Asia would affect approximately 40% of world population,” says the report “Global Outlook for Snow and Ice ‘, presented at Nairobi, UNEP headquarters.

But other areas like the Pyrenees, the Alps or the Andes, will also be severely damaged by the impact, it added, which analyzes current trends and possible future development of ecosystems of ice and snow as glaciers, rivers and lakes ice cream.

“Climate change is a vicious circle in regard to these ecosystems: higher temperatures lead to less ice and snow and this causes the land and sea have to absorb more sunlight, further increasing temperatures,” said Christian Lambrechts, Division of UNEP early warning and one of the coordinators of the report.

The effects of global scope will include substantial changes in the availability of water for drinking and irrigation, as well as an increase in sea levels, changes in water circulation patterns in the oceans, and the threat to the survival of species flora and fauna that survive on such ecosystems, among others.

According to the scientific information already available, the Arctic is warming almost twice as fast as the rest of the world and in many areas, mountain areas are also recording increases in temperatures over land at low altitude.

The cover of Arctic sea ice is decreasing by 8.9% per decade in summer, and it is possible that by 2100 we have an Arctic Ocean completely free of ice in the summer season.

The document also confirms the trend towards decreasing the size of glaciers in the world in recent years, especially since the 80′s.

The three glaciers that exist in Africa, Mount Kenya, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and the Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda, have already lost 82% of its surface and it is likely that Kilimanjaro’s glaciers will disappear completely within the space of two decades.

In the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are to contain 98% of frozen fresh water on the planet and, as an estimate, if Greenland were to melt completely the rise in sea level would reach seven meters.

For now, the layers of these regions that have melted together with similar phenomena in glaciers and thermal expansion of the oceans has led to an increase in sea level of just under eight inches between 1870 and 2001, according to the report.

But the text points out that a one meter rise in sea level, if not take measures to adapt to it, would expose 145 million people of possible flooding, mostly in Asia.

The report shows that ice and snow on the planet are inextricably linked to life in the rest of the planet, so that the consequences of climate change on these ecosystems not only affect those living or working in polar and mountainous areas.