disappearing glaciers

Glaciers is mass of ice which moves over land and it can be found where snow and ice were accumulated for years. Glaciers is considered as largest reservoir of fresh water on earth but is second largest to the total water on the earth. Glaciers can be categorized into two which are alpine glaciers and continental ice sheets. Alpine glaciers can be found on mountains and continental ice sheets is found mainly on large area such as Antartica and Greenland. When snow and ice accumulation exceeds ablation, glaciers will form. When it thickens and from the combination of surface slope and with snow, ice overlying pressure, the glaciers will reach a point and began to move. Through 1940s,it is known that the earth's glaciers have retreated since 1850 and it resulting in mass balance loss during 1985. The information can be found from this article http://www.grid.unep.ch/activities/global_change/switzerland.php & http://www.nichols.edu/departments/Glacier/glacier_retreat.htm. In order for glacier to survive, amount of precipitation in form of snowfall, avalanches or freezing rain is very important. Reasons that contributes to glaciers melting are such as from temperature increased, evaporations and wind scouring in response with the climate.

Glaciers melting effects to the environment:

• severe damages to villages & death
• floods
• increased water level
• leading to freshwater shortages
• reduces agricultural output (dry land)
• animals habitat loss
• destroyed coral reefs (sunlight cannot reach corals & reduce the quality, aquatics animal which depended on coral would not survive)

Glaciers melting does not only affect one part of the planet, but also gives huge impact to the entire world. Every part of the earth felt the effects of glaciers' melting and plus the melting process was accelerated by global warming. Since we can't stop glaciers melting, let us together find ways to reduce global warming and this will hopefully slow down the melting process.

The image of top 7 disappearing glaciers can be found from this article : http://green.yahoo.com/blog/guest_bloggers/21/top-seven-disappearing-glaciers.html;_ylt=AkNTmWsSB8TIz8iDVHhPtkCtV8cX &

http://green.yahoo.com/blog/greenpicks/276/images-of-disappearing-glaciers.html