The Aletsch glacier in the Swiss Alps
■ All specifications: Glaciation
Changes of climate, over long and short timescales, have major consequences for the cryosphere. Long-term climate change, controlled by Earth’s orbit and radiation balance, has driven glacial–interglacial cycles throughout geological history. Glaciers around the world have been in a long period of retreat since the end of the last ice age, and we are now in a period of postglacial landscape adjustment. Recent climate change caused by human activity is accelerating this long-term process of deglaciation, with increasingly dramatic impacts on both glaciers and permafrost.
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