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The new modelling techniques were applied to 10 glaciers in New Zealand to reveal a more detailed picture of what is driving the accelerating rates of ice melt in the region.

Lead researcher Lauren Vargo said the analysis compared ice melt under pre-industrial greenhouse gas emissions and current-day emissions to uncover “a quite extreme result”.

“Some of the glaciers were at least six times more likely to have experienced that high mass loss because of humans,” said Dr Vargo, who is based at the Victoria University of Wellington.

“We’re really confident with that number because that is the low end. The high end is 350 times more likely.

“But with the high ice mass loss event we saw [in 2018], it would not have happened at all without humans.”

The first study to make a direct link between human-induced climate change and glacier melt focused on glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere where more robust data records exist. The study – published in the journal Science in 2014 – looked at records between 1851 and 2010 using a running mean over 20-year periods.

Dr Vargo said the rate of ice melt has resulted in the loss of a quarter of New Zealand’s glaciers since the 1970s.

Rapid melt events in 2011 and 2018 prompted the study. ……

The study accounted for years like 2013 when some glaciers in New Zealand actually gained mass, but not at a rate to combat the overall decline.  ……. HTTPS://WWW.SBS.COM.AU/NEWS/HUMAN-INDUCED-CLIMATE-CHANGE-IS-CAUSING-EXTREME-MELTING-IN-NEW-ZEALAND-GLACIERS