World’s Glaciers Melting at Faster Pace

A study published Wednesday shows nearly all the world’s glaciers have been melting at an accelerated pace in recent years, accounting for rises in sea level over the last two decades.

In the study, published in the science journal Nature, an international group of scientists used high resolution imagery from NASA's Terra satellite to study 220,000 of the world’s glaciers between 2000 and 2019. They found those glaciers lost an average of 267 billion tons - 267 gigatons - of ice per year. The study found melting increased over time, from an average of 227 gigatons in the early 2000s, to an average of 298 gigatons each year after 2015.