When President Taft created Glacier National Park in 1910, it was home to an estimated 150 glaciers.

Since then the number has decreased to fewer than 30, and most of those remaining have shrunk in area by two-thirds.

Within 30 years most if not all of the park’s namesake glaciers will disappear.

Everywhere on Earth ice is changing. The famed snows of Kilimanjaro have melted more than 80% since 1912.

Glaciers in the Garhwal Himalaya in India are retreating so fast that researchers believe that most central and eastern Himalayan glaciers could virtually disappear by 2035.

Arctic sea ice has thinned significantly over the past half century, and its extent has declined by about 10% in the past 30 years.

When temperatures rise and ice melts, more water flows to the seas from glaciers and ice caps, and ocean water warms and expands in volume.

This combination of effects has played the major role in raising average global sea level between 10 and 20 centimeters in the past hundred years.

Scientists point out that sea levels have risen and fallen substantially over Earth’s 4.6-billion-year history.

But the recent rate of global sea level rise has departed from the average rate of the past two to three thousand years and is rising more rapidly – about one-tenth of an inch a year.

A continuation or acceleration of that trend has the potential to cause striking changes in the World‘s coastlines.