How glaciers are shrinking at an ever faster pace

Analysis: glaciers are on average 8 metres thinner and many have vanished completely because of global heating

The rate at which glaciers have been thinning has accelerated in recent years. Since the 1960s, when the effects of global heating started to become clear, the pace of melting has grown faster and faster.

In the 1960s, glaciers were losing just a few centimetres of thickness a year, and in some years even adding mass. However, by the 1990s, it was normal to see 40-60cm a year of average ice loss. The only exception was in the year after the enormous volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, which had a dramatic cooling effect on the Earth, resulting in a slight gain in mass.