🔗 Share this article

Far in California’s Sierra mountain range, enormous glaciers are disappearing and projected to dissolve entirely by the start of the next century, leaving summits without glaciers for the first time in human history, new research has discovered.

Age-Old Origins of Sierra Nevada Glaciers

The mountain range’s glaciers are more ancient than previously known, dating back tens of thousands of years, with a few as ancient as the most recent glacial period, according to a report released recently.

“Our pieced-together glacial history indicates that a coming glacier-free Sierra Nevada is without precedent in the history of humankind since known settlement of the Americas around twenty thousand years ago,” the study states.

Global Risk to Ice Formations

Glaciers around the world are under threat during the climate crisis. A study released in the month of May of the current year determined that almost forty percent of glaciers are destined to melt because of climate warming. If such heating increases by 2.7 degrees Celsius, which the world is presently on track for, as up to 75% will disappear, leading to sea level rise and mass displacement.

Throughout the Western United States, ice formations have shrunk substantially since they were initially recorded in the late 19th century, according to the report.

Focus on Key Ice Bodies

The recent study centers on four Sierra Nevada glaciers – the Conness, Maclure, Lyell and Palisade ice sheets – that are some of the biggest and probably oldest in the range. Their durability during climate warming makes them “bellwethers” for examining glacier disappearance in the west, the article notes.

Research Methods and Findings

Researchers examined newly uncovered base rock around the ice formations and collected specimens to determine how long the region was blanketed by glacial ice. They found that the ice masses have enveloped swaths of the mountain system for far longer than previously known – since prior to people inhabited North America.

California’s glacial sheets reached their maximum positions as early as 30,000 years ago, the study's researchers stated, and one of the ice bodies experts looked at is thought to have grown 7,000 years ago, sooner than once thought. The loss of ice formations, for the initial time in recorded history, shows the profound impacts of the climate change, a researcher of the study said.

Environmental and Symbolic Consequences

“We’ll be the initial ones to witness the glacier-less summits,” said the study's lead researcher, the principal investigator. “This has environmental ramifications for plants and animals. And it’s a representational decline. Climate change is very abstract, but these ice masses are concrete. They’re symbolic elements of the Western U.S..”