Close monitoring of glaciers vital as climate change and global
warming kicks in.

Glaciers are melting at record rates because of global warming and
climate change. A new report calls for better monitoring, especially in
Central Asia.

REUTERS
The world's vast ice fields are shrinking faster than at any time since
records began.

The victims of climate change.

The United Nations Environment Program, UNEP, says some ice caps may
disappear completely this century.

It wants closer monitoring of glacial melting in Central Asia and the
Tropics, an area largely overlooked in studies.

Research here in Norway has been on-going since 1900 - the records now
proving crucial in the analysis of climate change and global warming.

Miriam Jackson is a glaciologist with the Norwegian Water Resources and
Energy Directorate (NVE).

She's seen what's known as the tongue of one glacier lose 80 metres in two
years.

(Soundbite) Glaciologist Miriam Jackson, saying
(English):
"Other climate changes are much harder to detect, whilst glaciers
you can see a change over ten years or even over a shorter period, and see how
much a glacier has become bigger, or as more commonly the case, has become
smaller."

Jackson and her colleagues drill stakes into the glaciers to measure how
much they grow during the winter, due to precipitation, and how much melts in
the summer.

Remarkably, they've discovered climate change can also make glaciers
bigger.

Glaciologist Miriam Jackson, saying:
"It was a bit of a puzzle in the 1990s why did the glaciers become
bigger, and it was mainly because there was more snow. And this is a possible
effect of climate change. You could have a different climate, you could have a
warmer climate, but it could still mean that there's more snow and glaciers
become bigger because of a warmer climate."

But since 2000 glaciers in Norway have reverted to the common international
trend of thinning and shrinking.

UNEP says it's down to governments to agree to stringent emission cuts when
they negotiate a successor deal to the Kyoto Protocol in Copenhagen next year.


Otherwise glaciers could disappear from many mountain ranges by the turn of
the century.

Karina Lavik, Reuters