Glaciers of the world shrinking dramatically.

The Earth’s glaciers are ‘out of balance’ with the current global temperature and will shed nearly half their volume over the coming decades. This is according to an assessment by some of the worlds leading glaciologists.

The shedding of excess ice is already guaranteed, as no further warming is taken into consideration. Sebastian Mernild, one of the experts on the team says, "When we look at the data, we can see that the glaciers are out of balance, meaning the climate has actually changed faster than the changes we've seen in ice area and volume. Our data suggests the glaciers will commit about 30% of their area and about 38% of their volume to global sea level rise."

The research suggests this will be on the order of 22cm of sea level rise and will occur over the coming decades. The reason the glaciers are out of balance largely lays in the fact that the climate change has been so swift and thus the glaciers have not had time to adjust.

"Glaciers will move up in the terrain, they will become smaller and thinner and they will adjust to the climate conditions,” says Mernild. "On the other hand, we expect the climate will warm continuously in the future, meaning that the glaciers will become even more out of balance, and that means the glaciers will commit even more volume to sea level rise."

There is also a definite regionality to the changes. The Alps for instance are set to lose most of their mass by 2100, "But if you take into account the volume of ice in the glaciers here in the Alps, it won't have the same impact on the global sea level rise compared to if we see the same out of balance conditions in other places on the globe where we know there is more ice located,” says Mernild. "So, the contribution to sea level rise will not be that big from the Alps region.” Overall, the amount glaciers could potentially add to sea level rise is around half a metre.