title: Glaciers. Attribution of global glacier mass loss to anthropogenic and natural causes.
abstract: The ongoing global glacier retreat is affecting human societies by causing sea-level rise, changing seasonal water availability, and increasing geohazards. Melting glaciers are an icon of anthropogenic climate change. However, glacier response times are typically decades or longer, which implies that the present-day glacier retreat is a mixed response to past and current natural climate variability and current anthropogenic forcing. Here we show that only 25 ± 35% of the global glacier mass loss during the period from 1851 to 2010 is attributable to anthropogenic causes. Nevertheless, the anthropogenic signal is detectable with high confidence in glacier mass balance observations during 1991 to 2010, and the anthropogenic fraction of global glacier mass loss during that period has increased to 69 ± 24%.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics, University of Innsbruck, Austria. ben.marzeion@uibk.ac.at.
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Marzeion
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, Trent University, Peterborough, Canada.
authors.forename: J Graham
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Cogley
authors.affiliation: Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics, University of Innsbruck, Austria.
authors.forename: Kristin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Richter
authors.affiliation: Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics, University of Innsbruck, Austria.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Parkes
mesh_terms: D002980:Climate; D057231:Climate Change; D005615:Freezing; D006802:Human Activities; D006801:Humans; D046448:Ice Cover; D009792:Oceans and Seas