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Deep in California’s Sierra mountain range, massive glaciers are disappearing and expected to melt away entirely by the beginning of the coming hundred years, resulting in summits without glaciers for the first time in recorded human existence, recent studies has found.

Ancient Beginnings of Sierra Range Glaciers

The range's ice sheets are older than previously known, dating back tens of thousands of years, with some as old as the last ice age, according to a report published recently.

“Our pieced-together ice age record indicates that a coming ice-free Sierra Nevada is without precedent in the history of humankind since documented peopling of the Americas around twenty thousand years ago,” the article declares.

Worldwide Threat to Glaciers

Ice masses globally are under threat during the climate crisis. A study released in the month of May of the current year found that almost forty percent of glaciers are doomed to thaw because of climate warming. If such heating rises by 2.7 degrees Celsius, which the world is currently on course for, as many as seventy-five percent will vanish, causing ocean level increase and mass displacement.

Across the Western United States, ice formations have diminished substantially since they were initially recorded in the 1800s, according to the article.

Concentration on Key Ice Bodies

The recent study focuses on several Sierra Nevada glacial masses – the Conness, Maclure, Lyell and Palisade ice sheets – that are some of the biggest and likely oldest in the mountain chain. Their durability during climate warming makes them “bellwethers” for examining glacier disappearance in the west, the article notes.

Study Techniques and Results

Researchers examined recently exposed bedrock around the ice formations and took samples to determine how extensively the region was covered by ice. They found that the ice masses have covered large areas of the mountain system for far longer than earlier believed – since before people occupied North America.

The state's glaciers attained their maximum positions as early as thirty thousand years ago, the study's researchers wrote, and a particular of the ice bodies experts looked at is thought to have grown seven thousand years ago, earlier than once thought. The disappearance of glaciers, for the initial time in human history, demonstrates the dramatic effects of the climate change, a researcher of the study said.

Environmental and Representational Impact

“We’ll be the initial ones to see the glacier-less summits,” said the study's lead researcher, the study’s lead author. “This has ecological implications for flora and fauna. And it’s a representational decline. Climate change is highly intangible, but these ice masses are tangible. They’re iconic features of the Western U.S..”