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Deep in California’s Sierra Nevada, massive glaciers are vanishing and projected to dissolve entirely by the start of the next century, leaving summits without glaciers for the initial occasion in recorded human existence, new research has discovered.

Ancient Beginnings of Sierra Range Ice Masses

The mountain range’s ice sheets are older 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 ice age record shows that a coming glacier-free Sierra Nevada is unprecedented in human history since documented settlement of the Americas around twenty thousand years ago,” the article declares.

Worldwide Threat to Glaciers

Ice masses around the world are under threat amid the climate crisis. A study released in the month of May of the current year found that nearly 40% of ice sheets are doomed to melt because of climate warming. If this warming increases by 2.7C, which the planet is currently on track 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 1800s, according to the article.

Focus on Major Glaciers

The new research focuses on four Sierra Nevada glacial masses – the Palisade, Lyell, Maclure and Conness ice sheets – that are among the biggest and likely oldest in the mountain chain. Their durability amid global heating makes them “bellwethers” for examining glacier disappearance in the west, the article states.

Study Techniques and Findings

Researchers examined newly uncovered base rock around the ice formations and took samples to ascertain how extensively the area was blanketed by glacial ice. They found that the glaciers have covered swaths of the range for far longer than earlier believed – since prior to humans occupied North America.

The state's glacial sheets attained their maximum positions as long ago as 30,000 years ago, the study's researchers stated, and one of the glaciers experts studied is thought to have grown 7,000 years ago, sooner than previously believed. The disappearance of ice formations, for the initial time in recorded history, shows the dramatic effects of the climate change, one author of the study said.

Ecological and Symbolic Impact

“We’ll be the first to witness the glacier-less summits,” said the study's lead researcher, the principal investigator. “This has ecological ramifications for flora and fauna. And it’s a representational decline. Global warming is very abstract, but these ice masses are concrete. They’re symbolic elements of the American West.”