Paris. According to a UNESCO report, some of the world’s most famous glaciers, such as those in the Dolomites in Italy, Yosemite and Yellowstone parks in the United States, and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, will disappear by 2050 due to global warming. whatever the rise in temperature.
Others, in a scenario without changes in policies that curb high emissions, could almost vanish by the end of the century, among them those of the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu, those of the Los Alerces national parks in Argentina and Sangay in Ecuador.
The United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO, monitors some 18,600 glaciers in 50 of its World Heritage sites and said that the glaciers in a third of World Heritage sites will disappear by 2050, regardless of the climate scenario considered. .
While the rest can be saved by keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels, under a business-as-usual emissions scenario, around 50 percent of these World Heritage glaciers could nearly disappear. completely in 2100.
“This report is a call to action. Only a rapid reduction in our CO2 emissions can save the glaciers and the exceptional biodiversity that depends on them,” said Audrey Azoulay, director general of UNESCO, in a statement.
He added that the UN climate conference COP27 will play a crucial role in helping to find solutions to this problem.
World Heritage glaciers, as defined by UNESCO, represent about 10 percent of the world’s glacier surface and include some of the world’s best-known glaciers, whose loss is highly visible as they are focal points for the world tourism.
In Latin America, the report highlighted the loss of mass that the glaciers of the Los Glaciares and Los Alerces national parks in Argentina, Huascarán and Machu Picchu in Peru and the Sangay national park in Ecuador have suffered since 2000.
The glaciers, which include the famous Perito Moreno among others, have lost 45.6 percent of their mass or 88 billion tons of ice since 2000.
The lead author of the report, Tales Carvalho, told Reuters that World Heritage glaciers lose an average of 58 billion tons of ice per year – equivalent to the total annual volume of water used in France and Spain combined – and contribute to almost 5 percent of sea level rise observed in the world.
UNESCO recommends that, faced with the inevitable decline of many of these glaciers in the near future, local authorities make glaciers a central element of their policy, improving monitoring and research and applying disaster risk reduction measures.
“When glacial lakes fill up, they can burst and cause catastrophic flooding downstream,” Carvalho said.
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