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Earth has lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice in less than 30 years

Hollie Tufnell

According to scientists at the University of Leeds, Edinburgh, and Imperial College London, Earth has lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice between 1994 and 2017.

The study was led by Dr Tom Slater from the Centre of Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds. It combined numerical climate models and satellite observations from the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (IMBIE) to determine the rate that Earth’s ice is melting – and it is accelerating rapidly.

Having researched mountain glaciers, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the Southern Ocean and Arctic Ocean ice, and fnally the Antarctic ice shelves, they concluded that all areas had lost ice by the trillions of tonnes.

The Arctic Ocean ice saw the greatest decrease of some 7.6 trillion, while the Southern Ocean ice witnessed the least – approximately 0.9 trillion tonnes. Just over 60% of the ice loss occurred in the southern hemisphere. Atmospheric melting has driven 68% of ice loss from mountain glaciers, Arctic Ocean ice, ice shelf calving and ice sheet surface mass balance. The remaining 32% that occurred via ice shelf thinning and ice sheet discharge.

There is now widespread evidence to suggest a reduction in the planet’s ice has occurred directly because of climate change. Burning fossil fuels, which creates greenhouse gases, is believed to have infuenced this.

What is the scientifc explanation for this loss of ice?

As annual surface temperatures increase, other alterations such as in the levels, temperatures, and salinity of the oceans and the distribution of ice, thereafter occur. When extra water from glaciers and ice sheets enters the ocean, the seas expand in volume. As seawater expands, it also gets warmer via the process of thermal expansion.

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), coral bleaching and the loss of habitat are results of ocean warming, this greatly afects marine species and their ecosystems. Similarly, rising ocean temperatures afect humans by increasing the prospect of disease and threatening food security.

What impact does the ice melting have on sea level rise?

Since the 1990s, melting of the Greenland ice sheets has increased the world’s oceans by 10.6mm. Meanwhile, Antarctic has added 7.2mm. Over our planet’s 4.6-billion-year history, sea levels have risen and subsequently fallen considerably. But latest measurements indicate that global sea levels are rising per year by 4mm which is far greater than the average rate of the past two to three thousand years.

Results from the study show that in the last fve years, melting ice from mountain glaciers and ice sheets has surpassed global warming as the main cause of rising sea levels. The study

Image: Jay Ruzesky

also concluded that compared to the 1990s, ice loss has increased by 49% over the last 24 years. To confrm the trend, the study examined

satellite records of ice shelf range and in situ measurements of the changes in glacier mass which pre-date the survey.

Published thirty years after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) outlined their predictions, the group’s research reveals that the level of ice loss which has occurred between 1994 and 2007 matches the worst-case scenario estimate by IPCC in August 1990.

Additional consequences

Alongside this, the ice of the Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets coupled with mountain glaciers are freshwater. When they melt and drain into the oceans, the freshwater alters the delicate balance of salinity in the seas.

A continuation, or at worse, growth in this trend could potentially cause disastrous consequences for the world’s coastlines and those that live among them. If sea levels increase by the predicted 17cm, up to 16 million people are going to be afected by annual coastal fooding.

Local organisations receive a £2.5m grant from the Climate Action Fund

Emily Austin-Howell

The group, which includes organisations Our Future Leeds, Voluntary Action Leeds, Together for Peace and Leeds Tidal, wants to create a “zero-carbon, sociallyjust and liveable city by 2030”.

The funds will be directed to meet the needs of local people at a grassroots level.

Paul Chatterton, a professor in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds, supported the bid to the National Lottery as a member of Our Future Leeds. He said “We will be creating a network of hubs in communities across Leeds, where local people will be supported to create a climate action plan so they can make their places more sustainable, safer and liveable.”

“There will be about 16 hubs across a diversity of places over the fve-year programme all supported by experts and professionals in sustainable food, housing, energy, waste and more”.

The fve-year programme, launched 1st September, will create over 40 local jobs and make available around £400,000 of grants for additional groups to take climate and social justice action.

The project also involves the creation of a Leeds Climate Assembly where communities and other stakeholders will come together to share and learn from their experiences and successes in order to action a Leeds-wide climate emergency plan.

The Action Programme follows the City Council’s decision on 27 March 2019 to declare a ‘Climate Emergency’ and its commitment to work to make Leeds carbon neutral by 2030. Leeds Climate Commission established the Leeds Climate Change Citizens’ Jury in response. It was the frst Citizens’ Jury on climate change to take place outside of London. The 21 members, selected to represent a “mini public” of Leeds, produced a set of recommendations with a focus on transport and the proposed expansion of Leeds Bradford Airport, energy efcient housing and education. Their recommendations will be used to guide the future work of the Climate Commission and Leeds City Council.

With the local economy severely hit by coronavirus, the cash infux is opportune. The Build Back Better campaign aims to shape COVID-19 recovery policy through investment in a wellbeing economy. It seeks to secure long term-stimulus packages that are “designed around the core principle of building a stronger economy that ensures the long-term health and wellbeing of citizens, job creation, tackling climate change once and for all, and building a more resilient and inclusive society.”

Concurrently, Extinction Rebellion has resumed their civil disobedience campaign under the banner ‘We want to live’. The wave of “uprisings” are going ahead despite the arrest of several organisers charged with conspiracy to cause criminal damage. Spokespeople have said that the protesters will peacefully disrupt Parliament as it resumes after summer, “carrying out pressure building actions over two weeks, until they back the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill” The Bill was tabled in Parliament by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas on Wednesday. It refects a longstanding XR demand, one of its core asks is for Parliament to create and follow the guidance of a ‘Citizens’ Assembly’, empowering the public to take the lead in tackling the climate emergency.

Actions are also taking place in Manchester and Cardif city centres.

The creation of the Leeds Climate Assembly will broaden participation and perhaps the appeal of socalled deliberative democracy; demonstrating what is possible when the full diversity of people and through within the UK population is brought together and, through reason and debate, is able to the tackle big questions of social concern.

POLIS students successfully campaign to reinstate modules on gender, race and colonialism

Maariyah Fulat

The University of Leeds has been criticised for axing modules concerned with gender, race, and colonialism. Their decision has been described as ‘tone-deaf and disrespectful’ and was taken without consulting students.

Schools involved in this include the School of Politics and International Studies (POLIS), the School of Sociology and Social Policy (SSP) and the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies. Students frst heard of modules being dropped on July 1 st . It is expected other schools will act in accordance for the upcoming academic year.

Outraged by this move, POLIS students Freya Curtis, Eleanor Noyce and Victoria Pearce wrote an open letter to Deputy Vice Chancellor Tom Ward calling for the university to ‘review and reverse’ their decision.

The letter gathered nearly 100 signatures from fellow POLIS students and describes the amended module catalogue as ‘Eurocentric, westernised and whitewashed’.

Freya Curtis told the Gryphon that “modules such as ‘Reimagining Politics: Race, Gender and Popular Culture’ helped people make their decision to study in Leeds. “I was one of these people and I had been looking forward to this module throughout my university career.”

“Within political science, it is easy to forget the less ‘traditional’ areas such as this, in favour of theory or British politics, both which tend to favour and cover cisgender, heterosexual white men over any other group in society.”

The letter also criticises the university for failing to communicate with and support students in the aftermath of this decision, especially in light of a global health concern and one of the ‘biggest social and political movements’ of our lifetime.

Fellow organiser Eleanor Noyce told the Gryphon, after several meetings with the university and POLIS, Reimagining Politics had successfully been reinstated. In these meetings the university had justifed their descion to cut modules across the board (not just in POLIS) as a means to account for the lack of students attending this year and potential staf sickness.

A spokesperson for the University of Leeds said: “We are committed to creating an environment that meets the needs and aspirations of students and staf from all backgrounds. This includes providing an inclusive, researchled curriculum while developing and retaining a talented workforce with increased diversity at all levels.”

“While modules may fuctuate each year, an ongoing review of course content across the University includes a focus on decolonizing the curriculum.” This refers to the University’s Race Equality Action Plan.

The plan, instigated in February this year, aims to create a long-lasting cultural change throughout the university by fostering a “culture of inclusion, respect and equality of opportunity for all”. This includes curriculum change. The open letter asks if “the removal of the modules … the sort of progression in curriculum change” that the university promised.

The letter criticises the university for failing to deliver on it’s plan and highlights the lack of diversity in and support for staf and student communities, as well as a lack of specialist staf for modules on gender, race, and colonialism.

Freya said to the Gryphon: “It exposes a fundamental faw in the department that there are simply not enough experts in less traditional felds of political science.”

“This year has been unprecedented and will go down in history as such, I just wish that the by-products of this for the department and university were handled much better.”

Freya and fellow organisers would like to thank LUU for their support during this campaign, the POLIS course rep with whom they worked closely with and members of staf who listened and helped to the best of their ability.

Research confrms female leaders’ success in Covid-19 frst wave Reports throughout the global crisis have praised female leaders for their success in handling COVID-19.

Ana Hill Lopez-Menchero

Now the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the World Economic Forum have published analysis to back up this praise. Professor Supriya Garikipati and Professor Uma Kambhampati concluded that female leaders were more successful, up to the 19th of May, because of their “proactive policy responses”.

Professors Garikipati and Kambhampati, who analysed 19 female-led countries and 174 male-led countries, did not just look at the total number of cases and deaths in female-led countries compared to male-led countries. Their research used GDP, total population, urban population density, number of elderly residents, annual health expenditure per capita, openness to international travel and general level of gender equality. After taking all this data into account they still concluded that “COVID-19 outcomes are systematically and signifcantly better in countries led by women”.

Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, has been acclaimed for her reassuring Facebook Live Videos and her “going hard and early” approach which led to the virus frst being contained in June. The science-based leadership of Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, has merited similar praise, as it has given clarity to the German public on why the measures were being put in place.

Smaller female-led countries, such as Sint Maarten, also got the job done. PM Silveria Jacobs gave a clear message at the beginning of April: “Simply. Stop. Moving.” Denmark’s prime minister Mette Frederiksen closed Danish borders midMarch and swiftly shut down schools.Erna Solberg, the prime minister of Norway, made clear from the beginning that she was “letting scientists make the big medical decisions.” In Iceland, prime minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir gave free testing to all citizens, regardless of whether they were showing symptoms or not. Of course, there are some anomalies to this generalisation that all female leaders have succeeded, the main one being Belgium.

As a woman, I rejoice in seeing other women being praised in the press for their formidable eforts. Women are strong and resilient. It should not come as a shock that they have been even more so in such trying times. I would have expected this, especially when placed in comparison with male leaders like Donald Trump.

While the female leaders in the past couple of months have been clear with their measures and backed them up with scientifc data, male leaders have tended to adopt a more chaotic approach, changing regulations day to day.

We have seen frst-hand how Boris Johnson’s leadership has led to a relaxed population with no real sense of urgency when it comes to wearing masks and distancing among themselves. The confusion over why measures need to be continued has led to spikes and “covidiots”. Trump was even more erratic with his leadership, giving no scientifc evidence to support his suggested “cures” to the virus and showing no clarity in his strategy. This poor leadership has also been witnessed in Brazil, with president Jair Bolsonaro dismissing the virus as a “little fu”.

Although it could be argued that it is presumptive to present this as a gendered situation, there is a clear correlation between female leaders and a more successful response to coronavirus.

Image: nationbuilder.com

Moreover, the research does suggest that this success was caused by more decisive regulations and earlier action, such as full country lockdowns.

In their paper, Garikipati and Kambhampati have presented various reasons as to why the evidence is showing femaleled countries have fared better in this crisis. The main reason is attributed to the early lockdowns of female-led countries. While some have argued that this supported the stereotype that women are more risk-averse than men, the authors of the paper argued the opposite, stating that although women were unwilling to take risks when it came to human life, they took huge risks regarding the economy due to early lockdowns. Male leaders were perhaps less willing to take risks with their economies.

The authors also compare the diferences in leadership style between men and women, suggesting that in this crisis female leadership styles have triumphed. Eagly and Johnson’s 1990 research is brought in, comparing the “task-oriented” style of men and the “interpersonally oriented” style of women.

The virus is far from contained, but the evidence is compelling: female-led countries managed the frst wave of the pandemic better and more efectively than male leaders. Seeing female leaders excelling is extremely encouraging for women and girls around the world. Conceivably this pandemic will call for a new surge of female leaders and a stronger, more united world, as a result.