🔗 Share this article

Far in California’s Sierra mountain range, enormous ice formations are vanishing and expected to dissolve completely by the beginning of the coming hundred years, resulting in summits without glaciers for the first time in recorded human existence, new research has found.

Age-Old Origins of Sierra Nevada Glaciers

The mountain range’s glaciers are more ancient than earlier understood, dating back tens of thousands of years, with a few as ancient as the most recent glacial period, according to a report published recently.

“Our reconstructed ice age record indicates that a future ice-free Sierra Nevada is without precedent in the history of humankind since documented peopling of the Americas around twenty thousand years ago,” the article declares.

Worldwide Risk to Ice Formations

Glaciers around the world are at risk during the climate emergency. A study released in May of this year determined that almost forty percent of glaciers are destined to melt because of climate warming. If such heating rises by 2.7 degrees Celsius, which the planet is presently on track for, as many as seventy-five percent will vanish, leading to ocean level increase and large-scale relocation.

Across the American west, ice formations have shrunk significantly since they were initially recorded in the 1800s, according to the article.

Concentration on Major Glaciers

The new research centers on several Sierra Nevada glacial masses – the Palisade, Lyell, Maclure and Conness ice sheets – that are some of the biggest and likely most ancient in the mountain chain. Their durability during global heating makes them “indicators” for studying glacier disappearance in the western region, the article notes.

Research Methods and Results

Researchers examined recently exposed base rock around the glaciers and collected specimens to ascertain how extensively the area was blanketed by ice. They found that the ice masses have enveloped swaths of the mountain system for much longer than earlier believed – since prior to people inhabited North America.

California’s glaciers reached their peak extents as early as 30,000 years ago, the article’s authors stated, and one of the glaciers experts studied is believed to have grown 7,000 years ago, sooner than once thought. The disappearance of glaciers, for the first time in recorded history, shows the dramatic impacts of the climate crisis, a researcher of the investigation said.

Environmental and Symbolic Consequences

“We’ll be the first to witness the ice-free peaks,” said the study's lead researcher, the principal investigator. “This has ecological implications for flora and fauna. And it’s a symbolic loss. Climate change is very abstract, but these glaciers are concrete. They’re symbolic elements of the American West.”