Natural causes shrink glaciers too

Nature : Matthias Huss from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and his collaborators have analyzed a century’s worth of in situ measurements—10 000 in all—taken at 30 Swiss glaciers. By applying a model to the data, they could discern the natural, 60-year cycle of heating and cooling caused by the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. They could also discern the glaciers’ monotonic shrinkage, presumably due to the steadily warming global climate. Huss concluded that natural warming and manmade warming have each been responsible for about half of the combined 30 million cubic km of ice lost by the 30 glaciers since 1910.