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The world's glaciers are melting at a faster rate: study

(SOUNDBITE) (English) ROBERT MCNABB, ULSTER UNIVERSITY, SAYING:"Pretty much, no matter where we're looking, we're seeing mass loss, we're seeing fairly rapid mass loss, and it's seems to be increasing and there's not any indication that it's going to that that's going to change soon."

The study was published in the science journal Nature

It tracked changes to about 220,000 glaciers

and how ice loss has become a major source of sea level rise

which threatens coastal communities, food, and water sources

(SOUNDBITE) (English) TWILA MOON, GLACIOLOGIST AT THE NATIONAL SNOW AND ICE DATA CENTER, SAYING:"Unfortunately, it's extremely difficult to regrow a glacier. At this point, I have no expectation in all honesty that even substantial action to reduce our emissions and control Earth's temperature rise is going to grow our glaciers. It's a multi decade, sometimes hundreds or thousands of years process in order to add ice back into glaciers, because it has to pile up year after year after year in order to create glacier ice. So we're not at a point where the discussion is about growing glaciers or even keeping them exactly as they are now. We're at a point where we're trying to keep as much ice there as possible and really slow that rate of loss."