Talk:Retreat of glaciers since 1850

Some suggestions about restructuring (revisited)

I am repeating some suggestions which I had made a year ago but which were mostly dismissed as it was in the middle of the featured article review. Now that the article has been reviewed and demoted, I'd like to raise my points again. This is what I had written earlier: "I see that was I had suggested as "fundamentals" has now been added before the regional information, and I have just reworked it a bit now. My original suggestion was: "I think we are missing some more information about "fundamentals" at the start of the article, before it dives into all the different regions. I.e. things that are common throughout the world. I am missing a section on "causes" (Ok, might just be one sentence: it's getting warmer), but also one on "measurement techniques" perhaps? I have moved the section on "effects" up towards the start for that reason, too. Also the third paragraph in the lead contains information that is not really well covered in the main body; that's not ideal as the lead is meant to be a summary of the article. So I think we should have a section about the broad historical outline (after 1850), and then summarise that briefly in the lead. The lead should be made into a better summary, although it won't be easy to summarise all that content from the different regions. Note the article is also very long (60 kB of prose). Is it going into too much details in some areas where sub-articles exist?" - The current structure is now like this which is better (i.e. we no longer need a section called "fundamentals" now):

1 Causes
2 Measurements
2.1 Estimated glacial losses ---> does this fit under "measurements" or should it be elsewhere?
3 Effects
3.1 Water supply
3.2 Ecosystems
3.3 Floods
3.4 Sea level rise
3.5 Management approaches --> does this fit here? It's very short which is why I didn't think that it should be a Level-1 heading. 

EMsmile (talk) 11:16, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

I've made some changes to the structure now in order to address the concerns I had raised here a year ago. I think it's better now. EMsmile (talk) 07:52, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

The new structure is now like this:

Scale at the global level
Causes
Impacts
Middle latitude
Polar regions
Tropics
Management approaches

EMsmile (talk) 07:53, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Is the statement in the lead about the 5500 gigatons correct?

I came back to this article while working on water cycle which I am currently updating for climate change effects. I wanted to include something about glaciers and saw the sentence in the lead Excluding peripheral glaciers of ice sheets, total global glacial losses were likely 5500 gigatons over 1993–2018. However, I can't find this figure in the source provided (AR 6). Is it wrong? I found this statement in chapter 9 of the WG I report: Excluding peripheral glaciers of ice sheets (RGI regions 5 and 19), glacier mass loss rate was very likely 170 ± 80 Gt yr –1 for the period 1971 to 2019 (8 [4 to 14] % of 1971 glacier mass), 210 ± 50 Gt yr –1 over the period 1993–2019 (6 [4 to 8] % of 1993 glacier mass) and 240 ± 40 Gt yr–1 over the period 2006–2019 (3 [2 to 4] % of 2006 glacier mass.. Maybe it's anyway better for this statement in the lead to not provide actual numbers (nobody has a feel for Gt anyhow) but to just say this In summary, new evidence published since SROCC shows that, during the decade 2010–2019, glaciers lost more mass than in any other decade since the beginning of the observational record (same report, 9. 1275) EMsmile (talk) 09:46, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I got the answer now: I checked with Thian Y Gan (one of the IPCC authors) and he explained it to me: "I believe that is about right based on the estimate of 210 ± 50 Gt yr –1 over the period 1993–2019, 210 x 26 = 5460 Gt? That statement is found in page 65 of Chapter 9 of ARG-WGI- " So the 5500 gigaton figure is the accumulated amount over 26 years whereas the other figures are averages for a "per year" (hence it's called rate). I think I'll provide both figures here in the article for greater clarity. EMsmile (talk) 19:14, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Add more references to the lead?

My suggestion is that more refs should be added to the lead. This would be particularly useful if the lead is transcribed to another article with the excerpt too. Does anyone object? If not, which are the main refs we should use, I am assuming Chapter 9 of the AR 6 WG 2 report? EMsmile (talk) 09:20, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Some condensing needed

The article is a bit on the long side (60 kB (9918 words)). Looking at the section sizes (see top of the talk page), it seems that the sections about Europe, Himalayas and Antarctica are a bit too long. Probably some of that content could be moved to sub-articles (which perhaps didn't exist yet when this article was first created). Most of this article's content was added in 2006 and in 2015. So updating of figures and references is also needed. EMsmile (talk) 08:17, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Pinging User:InformationToKnowledge as you would probably be in a good position to condense/update the section on Antarctica. For example I wonder if we still need that bullet point list on ice shelves or if this could be deleted or an excerpt used from ice shelf. I mean the section beginning with "Ice shelves are not stable when surface melting occurs. The situation with some notable ice shelves is explained below:". Pageviews for this article are in the range of 300 pageviews per day so "middle of the range" for a climate change article. EMsmile (talk) 09:51, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I've made some changes to the ice shelf content now by removing that bullet point list (moving some of it to ice shelf). As this topic is fast moving (and fast melting...), I think it's better if it's located and updated in one article location (at ice shelf) not several articles. And then rather link to the other article from here. EMsmile (talk) 11:48, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Current Topics in Earth and Environmental Sciences

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 August 2023 and 9 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Dylan5723 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Dylan5723 (talk) 20:30, 10 October 2023 (UTC)