UNBC researcher says “wartime effort” needed to save glaciers in Canada

“Every degree of warming matters in glacier loss.”

That is according to Brian Menounos, a UNBC Researcher who has just co-authored a story that is featured in, and on the cover of, the journal Science.

The paper is about the impact that greenhouse gas and raising temperatures will continue to have on glaciers around the globe.

The paper says Western Canadian glaciers and many more worldwide could be gone in 80 years.

“If you want to reduce the loss of our beautiful glaciers, and limit sea-level rise, you have to limit fossil fuel consumption,” Menounos said.

According to Menounos, many of our streams and rivers in BC and western Canada are glacier-fed, and losing them could be devastating for some wildlife populations.

“If you go to the coast of BC this last autumn, we had exceptional warming and dry conditions. If you looked at the rivers that still had healthy flows, they were glacially-fed.”

Without the glaciers, Menounos said those rivers could run dry in those warmer months, destroying habitats for salmon and other life that depends on these rivers and streams, potentially wiping out large populations.

The Conference of Parties (COP), an annual United Nations climate change conference, committed to no more than 2.7 degrees of warming in the 21st century in 2021.

That does not sound like a lot to someone just reading the thermometer, but Menounos is very concerned that number is still too high.

“Under that commitment, we would lose a substantial amount of ice on planet earth that is locked up in these glaciers.”

Even if that 2.7 degree mark was nearly cut in half to 1.5 degrees, he said earth would still see 100,000 glaciers melt away.

“These are small glaciers, but they serve important roles in nourishing and supplementing these rivers.”

Menounos’ next research project will be based around how reflective glaciers are, and how much sunlight and heat they deflect.

“As we change how reflective those surfaces are, we can actually have enhanced melt occurring,” he said.

His hypothesis is the more they melt and the more heat the ground absorbs from the sun, the faster the glaciers will go.

He also said this could further contribute to wildfires.

Menounos said the fight against climate change and warming requires a “wartime effort – and I do not use that lightly.”

“We have to collectively work together and step up to reduce our dependency on fossil fuel,” he said, saying a large part of that lands on pressuring world governments to make change.

Click here to see the edition of Science that Menounos’ work is featured in.