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Deep in California’s Sierra Nevada, enormous ice formations are vanishing and projected to melt away completely by the beginning of the coming hundred years, resulting in summits without glaciers for the first time in human history, new research has found.

Age-Old Origins of Sierra Nevada Glaciers

The mountain range’s glaciers are more ancient than earlier understood, tracing back many thousands of years, with a few as old 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 known peopling of the Americas around twenty thousand years ago,” the article states.

Global Risk to Ice Formations

Glaciers around the world are at risk amid the climate emergency. A research released in May of this year determined that almost forty percent of ice sheets are doomed to melt because of global heating. If such heating increases by 2.7 degrees Celsius, which the planet is currently on course for, as many as seventy-five percent will vanish, causing ocean level increase and large-scale relocation.

Across the American west, ice formations have diminished substantially since they were first documented in the late 19th century, according to the article.

Focus on Major Ice Bodies

The recent study centers on four Sierra Nevada glaciers – the Palisade, Lyell, Maclure and Conness ice sheets – that are some of the biggest and likely oldest in the range. Their durability during climate warming makes them “indicators” for examining glacier disappearance in the west, the study states.

Study Techniques and Results

Researchers examined newly uncovered base rock around the glaciers and took samples to determine how long the area was covered by ice. They found that the glaciers have enveloped swaths of the mountain system for much longer than previously known – since prior to people inhabited North America.

California’s glaciers attained their peak extents as long ago as 30,000 years ago, the article’s authors stated, and one of the glaciers researchers looked at is believed to have grown 7,000 years ago, earlier than once thought. The disappearance of glaciers, for the initial time in human history, shows the profound impacts of the climate change, one author of the investigation said.

Environmental and Representational Impact

“We’ll be the first to witness the glacier-less summits,” said the study's lead researcher, the study’s lead author. “This has environmental implications for plants and animals. And it’s a representational decline. Climate change is highly intangible, but these glaciers are tangible. They’re symbolic elements of the American West.”