VANISHING GLACIER FORESTS

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Context: The world’s most popular search engine, Google, dedicated its homepage logo doodle for April 22, 2022 to climate change to mark Earth Day.

Details about doodle:

• The doodle, showed how topography of four places i.e. Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Sermersooq in Greenland, Great Barrier Reef in Australia and Harz Forests in Elend, Germany located far away from each other have been altered due to the anthropogenic phenomenon.
• Scientists have attributed the loss to global warming as well as change in land-use, mostly deforestation.

Mountain glaciers

• These are among the most visible and emblematic indicators of climate change.
• Glaciers provide important ecosystem services.
• Glacier melt water offers critical support to sensitive ecosystems such as high-mountain wetlands.

Challenges and risks associated with retreating mountain glaciers:

• Glacier retreat impacts water provision for people and economies downstream.
• Small-scale and large-scale agriculture, hydropower production, rural communities, and urban centers crucially depend upon glacier melt water during the annual dry season.
• For indigenous people, the continuous retreat of glaciers represents a significant cultural loss because they maintain a close relationship to mountains and glaciers as a part of their lives.
• Continuous glacier retreat also leads to extreme events and new and evolving disaster risks for downstream populations and vulnerable transport and energy infrastructure, such as massive glacier lake outburst floods or enhanced sediment flux.

What can be done?

• Low-emission pathways could safeguard 50 percent of present glacier areas.
• Both climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts are required to slow down mountain glacier retreating.

https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/vanishing-glaciers-forests-google-s-earth-day-doodle-shows-how-climate-change-altered-the-planet-82515