Central Asia’s Glaciers Are Melting At Astonishing Rates
After Central Asians were walloped by winter last week, many may find it hard to worry about too little snow. But that is a problem facing the region’s farmers and dam builders of the near future. Snow is an essential ingredient in the delicate annual cycle shaping seasonal river flows and thus food and electricity production.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.