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Deep in California’s Sierra mountain range, enormous glaciers are disappearing and projected to melt away completely by the start of the coming hundred years, leaving summits without glaciers for the initial occasion in human history, recent studies has found.

Age-Old Beginnings of Sierra Nevada Ice Masses

The mountain range’s ice sheets are older than previously known, tracing back many thousands of years, with a few as old as the last ice age, according to a report released recently.

“Our reconstructed ice age record indicates that a future glacier-free Sierra Nevada is unprecedented in human history since known peopling of the Americas around twenty thousand years ago,” the article states.

Global Threat to Glaciers

Ice masses globally are at risk amid the climate emergency. A research published in the month of May of this year determined that nearly 40% of ice sheets are destined to melt because of climate warming. If such heating rises by 2.7C, which the planet is currently on course for, as many as 75% will disappear, leading to ocean level increase and large-scale relocation.

Across the American west, ice formations have shrunk significantly since they were first documented in the late 19th century, according to the article.

Concentration on Key Glaciers

The recent study focuses on several Sierra Nevada glaciers – the Conness, Maclure, Lyell and Palisade ice sheets – that are among the biggest and likely most ancient in the range. Their longevity amid climate warming makes them “indicators” for examining ice loss in the western region, the study notes.

Research Methods and Results

Researchers looked at newly uncovered bedrock around the ice formations and collected specimens to ascertain how extensively the region was covered by glacial ice. They found that the ice masses have enveloped large areas of the mountain system for far longer than previously known – since before humans inhabited North America.

California’s glaciers reached their peak extents as long ago as thirty thousand years ago, the study's researchers wrote, and one of the glaciers researchers studied is believed to have grown seven thousand years ago, sooner than once thought. The disappearance of ice formations, for the initial time in human history, shows the dramatic impacts of the climate crisis, one author of the investigation said.

Environmental and Representational Consequences

“We’ll be the initial ones to see the ice-free peaks,” said the study's lead researcher, the principal investigator. “This has environmental implications for plants and animals. And it’s a representational decline. Global warming is very abstract, but these glaciers are concrete. They’re symbolic elements of the Western U.S..”