Meltdown

From the Himalaya to Mount Kilimanjaro to Patagonia, the warming climate is assailing the world's 160,000 or so glaciers. Monitoring and measuring all the glaciers directly would be impossible, and so earth scientists have turned to satellite data for help. The Landsat satellites, managed jointly by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, have been tracking global land features at a 100-foot resolution since 1982. A first assessment for part of the European Alps, the world's most densely populated high-mountain region, has just been reported by geographer Frank Paul and his collaborators at the University of Zurich-Irchel in Switzerland. The picture is not encouraging.

Between 1985 and 1999 the Swiss glaciers lost at least 18 percent of their surface area--seven times the rate of loss calculated for the preceding century. At that rate, Paul and his colleagues expect, all Alpine regions below 6,500 feet will be iceless by the year 2050. And by 2100, your descendants vacationing in Switzerland will have to climb above 8,000 feet if they want to catch a glimpse of what remains of the icy behemoths. ("Rapid disintegration of Alpine glaciers observed with satellite data," Geophysical Research Letters 31: L21402, 2004)--S.R.