By Sid Perkins
Comparisons of satellite images, aerial photos, and old surveys of Alpine glaciers indicate that the ice masses are losing area at an accelerating rate.
Between 1973 and 1999, the total area covered by almost 940 Swiss glaciers fell by 18 percent, an average rate of 1.3 percent per year. That tempo is more than six times the annual rate of shrinkage that those ice masses experienced from 1850 to 1973, says Frank Paul of the University of Zurich-Irchel in Zurich.