Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: Average global temperatures are nudging closer to 1.5C above preindustrial levels. Even faster warming is occurring in alpine and polar regions because the loss of snow and ice is removing the thermal insulation of the land.
The thaw is altering the shape, colour and solidity of the landscape, creating or expanding glacial meltwater lakes and, in the long term, threatening the origin of many rivers and the drinking supplies of populations downstream.
Scientists are certain that glacier retreat is caused by human-driven global heating. This has caused glacier collapses from the Alps to the Andes.
