What's happening to Alaska's glaciers?
Alaska hosts around 26,500 glaciers, covering about 12% of Earth’s global glacier area. Alaska’s glaciers account for one quarter of all global glacier mass loss from 2000 to 2019, and have seen the greatest acceleration in rates of mass loss of any glacierised region. This makes Alaska the largest regional glacier contributor to global sea-level rise outside the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Glacier retreat in this region is driven by warming air and ocean temperatures, as well as reductions in precipitation in some regions, due to both long-term climate change and medium-term climate cycles in the Pacific region.