There are 50 different UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) heritage sites that are home to glaciers in North America, and are located all over the world from Yosemite National Park, to Peru’s Huascarán National Park, and New Zealand’s Te Wahipounamu.  Though a new study theorizes one third of these glaciers will have completely melted by 2050 due to carbon emissions warming up the Earth, and are currently underway of very rapidly melting away.

Fortunately, if the planet’s global temperature doesn’t exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times the glaciers can still be saved, UNESCO  says.

In these World Heritage sites, there are a whopping 18,600 glaciers located within them.  In total, these glaciers make up approximately one tenth of the world’s glaciers, and they are losing about 58 billion tons of ice each year, and contribute to five percent of Earth’s rising water levels.

Melting glaciers have also proven that it doesn’t only affect the landscape and wildlife, but people too.  “When glaciers melt rapidly, millions of people face water scarcity and the increased risk of natural disasters such as flooding, and millions more may be displaced by the resulting rise in sea levels,” Bruno Oberle, director-general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature said.

Right now, world climate leaders are gathering together at COP27, and UNESCO is trying to create a fund for saving these glacier monitoring and preservation that plants flood and natural disaster warnings for people, and helps support research to help save these glaciers from completely melting away.

Despite all this bad news about the melting glaciers and all their negative impacts, UNESCO stated that if the planet’s global temperature doesn’t exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times the glaciers can still be saved.