Climate Change Lays Waste to Spain's Glaciers

Climate Change Lays Waste to Spain's Glaciers

Spain loses 90% of its glaciers thanks to global warming, threatening drought as rivers dry up


The Pyrenees mountains have lost almost 90% of their glacier ice over the past century, according to scientists who warn that global warning means they will disappear completely within a few decades.

While glaciers covered 3,300 hectares of land on the mountain range that divides Spain and France at the turn of the last century, only 390 hectares remain, according to Spain's environment ministry...

"This century could see (perhaps within a few decades) the total, or almost total, disappearance of the last reserves of ice in the Spanish Pyrenees and, as a result, a major change in the current nature of upper reaches of the mountains," the authors of the report on Spain's glaciers said.

Scientists have ruled out the idea that the progressive deterioration of glaciers around the globe are part of normal, long-term fluctuations in their size. Europe's glaciers are thought to have lost a quarter of their mass in the last 8 years...

Even the Alps, though, stand to lose up to 75% of its glacial area by mid-century.

February 23, 2009

for complete article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/23/spain-glaciers-climate-change