If the glaciers on the mountains are melting, why can’t they regenerate and why can’t they be restored?
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Glaciers form because the average temperature in a year is low enough that all the snow that fall in the winter does not all melt in the summer. So you get a buildup of snow on top of the mountain year after year which eventually compact into ice and slowly flow down the mountain side to where it is warm enough for the ice to melt faster then it grows.
In general the temperature gets 1 degree Celcius lower for each 100 meter in altitude. And in the last few decades the average global temperatures have increased this much. This means that the ice melts at about 100 meter higher altitude then before and that the amount of new snow on the glaciers each year is reduced a lot due to melting, a lot of places older snow even melts on the top of glaciers.
We are not able to regenerate these glaciers without reducing the global average temperatures down to normal levels. And with the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, over twice the normal amount, this is impossible.
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