News Center Maine features UMaine climate change researchers

News Center Maine reported that six scientists from the University of Maine who were on the 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition are releasing their findings from their ice research conducted there. The team’s goal was to determine whether the highest elevation point of Earth has been impacted by human activity. Mariusz Potocki, research team member and graduate student, said the team found that “every year, about 2 meters of ice is gone.” Paul Mayewski, director of the UMaine Climate Change Institute, told News Center Maine, “The surface of that glacier has transitioned from a snowy white surface, which reflects a lot of incoming radiation to a darker surface that absorbs a great deal of heat. And at this rate, which is expected to continue if not increase, the glacier will disappear in the next 20 to 30 years.”