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Glaciers are in danger. More than a third of those classified as World Heritage should have disappeared by 2050 according to Unesco. Mythical places, like Yellowstone or certain places in the Pyrenees, could very soon no longer exist.
These are magical places that litter the mountains, yet many of them could disappear. Indeed, according to a Unesco report, a third of world heritage glaciers are doomed. Those of Yellowstone Park in the United States, the Dolomites in Italy or even the Pyrenees in France could no longer exist in 2050. The famous snows of Kilimanjaro are also threatened. “The first issue is the loss of heritage”explains Étienne Berthier, glaciologist at the CNRS.
To better understand this gradual disappearance, researchers are using satellite images. This allowed them to calculate that a glacier in Argentina had lost four kilometers in 15 years. Thanks to these images, scientists can examine the melting of the ice. This melting represents a loss of 58 billion tons of ice per year, which represents the annual water consumption for France and Spain. People who live close to and depend on these glaciers suffer from these colossal losses. Despite these findings, Unesco reports that if the rise in temperatures is regulated to 1.5° by 2050, most glaciers should be preserved.