A paper published today in The Cryosphere studies glacier length data available worldwide since 1800 and finds that glaciers retreated faster during the first half of the 20th century than the second half from 1950-2000. This is the opposite pattern that would be expected if man-made greenhouse gases were the cause, and suggests a natural origin.
Most warmists and the IPCC claim man-made greenhouse gases did not begin to affect climate until after 1950, and thus can’t be blamed for the fastest rate of glacier retreat from ~1850-1950 and subsequentdeceleration. The authors find glaciers showed little change in length during the latter part of the Little Ice Age 1800-1850, but following the end of the Little Ice Age in ~1850 most began a relatively rapid retreat that began to decelerate after ~1950. The data shows that calving glaciers [red lines in fig 10a below] reversed to a net advancing trend after ~2001, and that the number of calving glaciers [fig 10b below] has sharply decreased from ~99% to 50% since the year 2000.
