Glaciers are losing mass at an accelerated rate, and we are probably not going to get back what's been lost, according to a new study published in the science journal Nature.
An international group of researchers looked at 220,000 glaciers around the world using NASA's Terra satellite and found that they were all losing mass, at around 267 gigatons of ice per year, and that loss is accelerating.
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Between 2000 and 2004, glaciers lost on average lost 227 gigatons annually. But after 2015, that increased to 298 gigatons a year.
"At this point, I have no expectation in all honesty that even substantial action to reduce our emissions and control Earth's temperature rise is going to grow our glaciers," Twila Moon, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, told Reuters. She was not involved in the study.
"It's a multi decade, sometimes hundreds or thousands of years process in order to add ice back into glaciers, because it has to pile up year after year in order to create glacier ice.
"So, we're not at a point where the discussion is about growing glaciers or even keeping them exactly as they are now. We're at a point where we're trying to keep as much ice there as possible and really slow that rate of loss."
Ice peeling off the Perito Moreno glacier in southern Argentina. It is one of the glaciers most impacted by melting. /Reuters/ Andres Forza
This study has the potential to create a more accurate picture of melting glaciers since previous research only looked at 10 percent of the world's ice fields.
Some glaciers that are most affected by melting are also intricately connected to various communities, including Alaska, Iceland, the Alps, the Himalayas and the Pamir mountains. The loss of these ice masses could lead to water and food shortages.
"We get this increase in melting, and that actually increases the availability of water that that comes in these rivers," said Robert McNabb, a co-author of the initial study.
"But the problem is that after a period of time that stops increasing and then it decreases fairly rapidly."
However, McNabb added that while this rapid loss can be intimidating, the global community should still act to save what's left: "When you see something like this where you go, 'oh, wow, glaciers are losing mass, it's getting faster'. That sounds really bad.
"It is, but that's not a doomsday scenario…We need to act."
Video editor: Pedro Duarte.