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The science of glaciers and climate change

Listen to Sam Pimentel's interview on CFAX Radio about glacier runoff and climate change. 

Global warming is causing West Coast glaciers to melt, and the runoff will affect locals in a major way, according to Sam Pimentel, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Trinity Western University.

Pimentel’s research focuses on glaciers, drainage, and the science of runoff and its environmental impact. He says losing glaciers will increase runoff, affecting hiking and skiing trails and much more. Increased water levels will also have an adverse effect on communities at sea level, and on aquatic ecosystems such as salmon habitats.

To limit the effect of global warming to an increase of only two degrees, as experts are discussing at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, countries need to act now, according to Pimentel.

“The science tells us we need to make radical changes very quickly and very aggressively,” he says. “The political challenge is where do you draw that line? What’s possible?”