Climate Change In Canada Essay

Climate Change could Cause Loss of most of Canada’s Glaciers

Climate change (http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/) has been blamed for many problems, and a recent study adds one more to its list—the meltdown of huge glaciers that travel over western Canada. In fact, the country could lose a large majority of Canada’s glaciers melting away in less than a hundred years from 2015.

The study, which was published in Nature Geoscience, says that by 2100, the glaciers in western Canada, such as those in Alberta and British Columbia, could be melted down between 70 and 90 percent. The meltdown could in turn affect many other things from the temperatures in local waters, the loss of fresh water supplies and to the loss of hydroelectric power sources in the area.

That’s due to the fact that the volume of water the glaciers have lost is somewhat hidden because it comes from the ice thinning, which only happens at a small rate of around one meter every year.

The problem of melting glaciers is not only happening in Canada. Climate changes and other problems are affecting these traveling ice sheets all over the globe. There are more than 17,000 glaciers in Canada alone, as well as nearly 200,000 in the whole world, and their loss will not go unnoticed should it occur.

Besides the aforementioned issues, the loss of the world’s glaciers could also contribute to global warming (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html) scenarios. The research being done concerning Canada’s glacier loss gave thought to several global warming possibilities.

The least concerning global warming scenario has the median temperatures on the Earth rising by between a half degree and three degrees Fahrenheit or between about .3 and 1.7 degrees