🔗 Share this article

Far in California’s Sierra mountain range, enormous ice formations are disappearing and expected to dissolve completely by the start of the next century, resulting in summits without glaciers for the initial occasion in recorded human existence, recent studies has discovered.

Age-Old Beginnings of Sierra Nevada Glaciers

The mountain range’s ice sheets are older than earlier understood, dating back tens of thousands of years, with some as old as the most recent glacial period, according to an article published recently.

“Our pieced-together ice age record shows that a coming glacier-free Sierra Nevada is unprecedented in human history since documented peopling of the Americas around twenty thousand years ago,” the article states.

Global Risk to Glaciers

Glaciers globally are at risk during the climate crisis. A study released in the month of May of this year found that nearly 40% of ice sheets are doomed to thaw because of global heating. If such heating increases by 2.7C, which the world is currently on course for, as many as seventy-five percent will disappear, causing sea level rise and large-scale relocation.

Throughout the American west, glaciers have diminished substantially since they were initially recorded in the 1800s, according to the article.

Focus on Key Glaciers

The new research centers on several Sierra Nevada glacial masses – the Palisade, Lyell, Maclure and Conness ice sheets – that are some of the biggest and likely most ancient in the range. Their durability during global heating makes them “bellwethers” for studying ice loss in the west, the study notes.

Research Methods and Findings

Researchers examined recently exposed bedrock around the glaciers and took samples to ascertain how extensively the region was blanketed by glacial ice. They found that the glaciers have enveloped large areas of the mountain system for far longer than previously known – since before people occupied North America.

The state's glaciers reached their peak extents as long ago as thirty thousand years ago, the article’s authors stated, and one of the glaciers researchers looked at is thought to have expanded seven thousand years ago, earlier than previously believed. The disappearance of glaciers, for the initial time in recorded history, demonstrates the dramatic impacts of the climate change, a researcher of the investigation said.

Ecological and Symbolic Consequences

“We’ll be the initial ones to see the ice-free peaks,” said the study's lead researcher, the study’s lead author. “This has ecological implications for plants and animals. And it’s a representational decline. Global warming is very abstract, but these glaciers are concrete. They’re symbolic elements of the American West.”