Artificial measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions will not stop the melting of glaciers at the current level of the average annual temperature of the Earth's atmosphere - and can only slow it down a bit.

This conclusion was reached by climatologists from the University of Bremen, their article published in Nature Climate Change, transfers N + 1.

Climatologists from Germany and Austria, led by Ben Marzeion of the University of Bremen, conducted computer simulations of the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets at various temperatures of the Earth's atmosphere.

Scientists note that the dynamics of the melting of ice sheets has two characteristic time scales. At time intervals of several millennia, the rate of melting of ice is determined, first of all, by the interaction of the glacier with that part of the land on which it is located. On shorter time intervals - several hundred years - the dynamics of shrinking the volume of the glacier is more dependent on the interaction with the surrounding glacier atmosphere. Because of the feedback system that arises with this, between the volume of the glacier and the air temperature, for each state of the atmosphere, there is a corresponding stable volume of the ice shield. On how far away from the state of equilibrium is the glacier at a given time, the melting rate also depends.

Scientists have found that at the current temperature, the current mass of ice shields is very far from a sustainable level. The deviation from the equilibrium mass of the glacier is now about 36 percent. Thus, even if the temperature of the atmosphere is maintained at the current level, when the glacier reaches a stable volume, the level of the world's ocean will rise by 10 centimeters. In order to make the glacier stable with the current mass, the temperature and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the pre-industrial level (about the middle of the 19th century).

Nevertheless, according to scientists, during the 21st century a stable level of mass of glaciers will not be achieved. Therefore, in order to assess the possible change in the volume of ice over the next several decades, depending on the dynamics of the atmospheric temperature, the scientists conducted dynamic modeling of glaciers taking into account several scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions. It turned out that the difference in sea level rise between different emission scenarios is insignificant and is about 10 centimeters by the end of the 21st century.

At the same time, at least some statistically significant difference in the implementation of various scenarios appears only after 2080.

Climatologists note that the results of the simulation show that artificial reduction of emissions in any case will not stop the melting of glaciers, but can only slightly change its speed. Nevertheless, according to the authors of the paper, the results obtained relate primarily to short time intervals (on the order of several decades), at longer times, measures to reduce the rate of glacial melting may be more effective.