ZURICH, Switzerland — Associated Press Published on Sunday, Mar. 16, 2008 8:47AM EDT Last updated on Monday, Mar. 30, 2009 3:14PM EDT
The UN Environment Program says glaciers are shrinking at record rates and many could disappear within decades.
The UN agency says scientists measuring the health of almost 30 glaciers around the world found that ice loss reached record levels in 2006.
The agency says millions of people depend on glaciers for drinking water, irrigation and power generation.
The most severe loss in 2006 was recorded at Norway's Breidalblikkbrea glacier, which shrank 3.1 metres, while Chile's Echaurren Norte glacier was the only one to grow slightly thicker.
On average, the glaciers shrank by 1.5 metres in 2006, the most recent year for which data are available.
The UN Environment Program warns further ice loss could have dramatic consequences, particularly in India, whose rivers are fed by Himalayan glaciers, and would affect the west coast of North America, which gets much of its water from glaciers in mountain ranges such as the Rockies and Sierra Nevada.
“The latest figures are part of what appears to be an accelerating trend with no apparent end in sight,” said Wilfried Haeberli, director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service.
The Zurich-based body conducted the study on which the findings are based.
Mr. Haeberli said glaciers lost an average of 0.3 metres of ice a year between 1980 and 1999.
But since the turn of the millennium, the average loss has increased to about 0.5 metres.
The UN Environment Program's executive director, Achim Steiner, urged governments to agree to stricter targets for emissions reductions at an international meeting next year in the Danish capital, Copenhagen.
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