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Deep in California’s Sierra mountain range, enormous glaciers are vanishing and projected to dissolve entirely by the beginning of the coming hundred years, resulting in ice-free peaks for the initial occasion in human history, new research has discovered.

Age-Old Origins of Sierra Nevada Glaciers

The mountain range’s ice sheets are older than earlier understood, tracing back many thousands of years, with some as ancient as the most recent glacial period, according to a report published recently.

“Our pieced-together glacial history shows that a coming ice-free Sierra Nevada is without precedent in human history since documented peopling of the Americas ~20,000 years ago,” the study declares.

Worldwide Risk to Glaciers

Glaciers around the world are under threat amid the climate emergency. A research released in the month of May of this year determined that nearly 40% of glaciers are destined to thaw because of climate warming. If such heating rises by 2.7C, which the planet is currently on course for, as many as seventy-five percent will disappear, causing ocean level increase and mass displacement.

Throughout the American west, glaciers have shrunk significantly since they were first documented in the 1800s, according to the article.

Focus on Major Ice Bodies

The recent study focuses on four Sierra Nevada glacial masses – the Palisade, Lyell, Maclure and Conness glaciers – that are among the largest and likely most ancient in the mountain chain. Their durability during climate warming makes them “indicators” for studying glacier disappearance in the west, the study states.

Study Techniques and Results

Scientists looked at newly uncovered bedrock around the glaciers and collected specimens to ascertain how extensively the region was covered by glacial ice. They found that the ice masses have covered swaths of the range for far longer than earlier believed – since prior to people occupied North America.

California’s glaciers reached their maximum positions as long ago as thirty thousand years ago, the article’s authors stated, and one of the ice bodies researchers looked at is thought to have expanded 7,000 years ago, sooner than previously believed. The loss of glaciers, for the first time in human history, shows the dramatic impacts of the climate change, a researcher of the investigation said.

Ecological and Representational Impact

“We’ll be the first to witness the glacier-less summits,” said the study's lead researcher, the principal investigator. “This has environmental implications for flora and fauna. And it’s a representational decline. Climate change is very abstract, but these ice masses are tangible. They’re symbolic elements of the Western U.S..”