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Deep in the state of Sierra Nevada, massive glaciers are vanishing and expected to melt away entirely by the start of the next century, leaving summits without glaciers for the initial occasion in human history, recent studies has discovered.

Ancient Origins of Sierra Range Glaciers

The range's ice sheets are more ancient than earlier understood, dating back many thousands of years, with a few as old as the most recent glacial period, according to a report published recently.

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

Global Risk to Ice Formations

Ice masses around the world are at risk amid the climate emergency. A research released in May of the current year found that almost forty percent of glaciers are destined to thaw because of climate warming. If such heating rises by 2.7 degrees Celsius, which the planet is presently on course for, as many as seventy-five percent will disappear, causing sea level rise and mass displacement.

Throughout the American west, glaciers have shrunk substantially since they were initially recorded in the late 19th century, according to the report.

Focus on Key Ice Bodies

The new research focuses on four Sierra Nevada glaciers – the Conness, Maclure, Lyell and Palisade ice sheets – that are among the largest and likely oldest in the mountain chain. Their longevity during climate warming makes them “indicators” for studying glacier disappearance in the western region, the study notes.

Study Techniques and Results

Scientists examined recently exposed base rock around the glaciers and collected specimens to determine how long the region was covered by ice. They found that the glaciers have covered large areas of the mountain system for far longer than previously known – since prior to humans inhabited North America.

California’s glacial sheets attained their peak extents as early as thirty thousand years ago, the article’s authors wrote, and a particular of the ice bodies researchers studied is thought to have grown seven thousand years ago, sooner than once thought. The loss of ice formations, for the first time in recorded history, demonstrates the dramatic impacts of the climate crisis, a researcher of the study said.

Environmental and Representational Impact

“We’ll be the initial ones to see the glacier-less summits,” said Andrew Jones, the principal investigator. “This has ecological implications for flora and fauna. And it’s a representational decline. Climate change is very abstract, but these glaciers are concrete. They’re iconic features of the American West.”