What’s the news?

• UNESCO has warned that Glaciers at many UNESCO World Heritage sites including Yellowstone and Kilimanjaro National Park will likely vanish by 2050.
• The warning followed a study of 18,600 glaciers at 50 World Heritage sites covering around 66,000 square kilometres (25,000 square miles) which found glaciers at a third of the sites were “condemned to disappear”.

Key highlights

• According to IPCC, the melting of ice and snow is one of the 10 key threats from climate change.
• The study shows these glaciers have been retreating at an accelerated rate since 2000 due to CO2 emissions, which are warming temperatures.
• The glaciers were losing 58 billion tonnes of ice every year, equivalent to the combined annual water use of France and Spain, and were responsible for nearly 5% of observed global sea-level rise.
• In Africa, glaciers in all World Heritage sites will very likely be gone by 2050, including at Kilimanjaro National Park and Mount Kenya and in Europe, some glaciers in the Pyrenees and in the Dolomites will also probably have vanished in three decades time.
• Thus, only a rapid reduction in our CO2 emissions levels can save glaciers and the exceptional biodiversity that depends on them. The COP27 will have a crucial role to help find solutions to this issue.

reference:

https://www.hindustantimes.com/environment/onethird-of-world-heritage-glaciers-to-melt-by-2050-says-unesco-101667520822822.html