How do glaciers affect humans?

At this stage you must understand what impacts glaciers may have in continental landscapes (river piracy and lakes disappearance), but also how are glaciers used as Paleoclimatology indicators (ice cores and its components).

In this post, I rather decided to treat about how glaciers disappearance affect human societies.

Sea level rise

Figure 1

Many people have to migrate and gradually will in the near future due to the increasing global sea level. It has been found that 60% of the ice loss contributing to the sea level rise comes from glaciers rather than polar ice sheets!

Figure 1 shows a caricature of people's concern to sea-level rise.

Water resources

There is a critical link between the fate of glaciers and the sustainability of water resources downstream. Risks to water resources need to be run on a regional scale so it takes into account the particulate human factors of the area as well as the type of Climate (arid, cold, hot). It is then seen that there is not the same risk for water supply in each part of the world.

Figure 2

It is believed inin 50 years hot summers will become a bigger problem in term of water availability in Swiss as glaciers will be too small to supply the downstream rivers and then the population in term of drinkable water and hydropower.

Figure 2 shows how a glacier and water barrier are linked to provide benefits for human activities. 

In other areas such as the Himalaya, populations will gradually be impacted by the disappearance of the glaciers as those release melted water into 3 main rivers: Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra.

"Approximately 500 million people depend upon water from these three rivers to support agricultural and economic practices"

This will induce a heightening of seasonal shift in precipitation, flood risks and water supply. Most of the populations in the Himalaya depend on these 3 rivers, especially in dry areas where we expect the water supply to diminish in the near future.

Mountain tourism

2 cases studies from the Italian Alps (Chapter 15) show that there has been an increase in contact ice lakes and calving phenomenons in this area since the last few decades, attracting the curiosity of tourists, and increasing the risk of insecurity. Look at the video on the left side to see how this kind of tourism can be dangerous.

So what needs to be done?

Solutions need to be found to tackle the retreat of glaciers, and water needs to be managed better. As we make progress with technologies we should use them to prevent glaciers retreat. Would Geo-engineering be useful in the next few decades? We will have a look at this in the next post.