Climate change is shrinking glaciers faster than ever, with 7 trillion tons lost since 2000

Climate change is accelerating the melting of the world's mountain glaciers, according to a massive new study that found them shrinking more than twice as fast as in the early 2000s. The world's glaciers lost ice at the rate of about 255 billion tons (231 billion metric tons) annual from 2000 to 2011, but that quickened to about 346 billion tons (314 billion metric tons) annually over about the next decade, according to the study in this week’s journal Nature. The study drew on an international effort that included 233 estimates of changes in glacier weight.