The Retreat of Glaciers in the 21st Century

By Anna Fleck – Statista

A recent UNESCO study on protected glaciers around the world highlights the particularly severe impact of climate change on the Arctic region, where glacier and ice cap melting is generally faster than in the Antarctic zone (southern hemisphere). With estimated net losses of several hundred billion tons of ice since 2000, the sites most affected by melting were Kluane, Wrangell-Saint Elias, Glacier Bay, and Tatshenshini-Alsek parks in Alaska (United States and Canada), the Ilulissat Icefjord in Greenland (Denmark), and the Vatnajökull ice cap in Iceland. The largest glacier in the Alps, located in the Jungfrau-Aletsch region of Switzerland, is the ninth most impacted site on the list, with a net loss of 7 billion tons of ice over twenty years.