Recent large-scale research has indicated that glaciers are melting at an alarming pace.

According to three-dimensional satellite observations of the entire world's mountain glaciers, they are dropping 31% more snow and ice each year than they did 15 years ago.

Scientists blame that on man-made climate change.

According to the report, the world's glaciers lost an average of 267 billion tonnes of ice each year between 2000 and 2019, enough already to submerge the whole surface area of Switzerland under six meters of water on an annualized basis.

According to the report, the level of glacier ice loss has risen by about 30% in the last 20 years.

According to the report, Earth's glaciers lost 227 billion tonnes of ice each year from 2000 to 2004, but this number has increased to 298 billion tonnes each year between 2015 and 2019.

The average rate of thinning for glaciers south of Antarctica and Greenland roughly doubled during the same timeframe, from 36cm per year in 2000 to 69cm per year in 2019.

The results indicate that Earth's glaciers have lost 4 to 5% of their overall volume in the last 20 years, as per the study's lead scientist told ‘The Independent’.

According to the report, nearly half of the world's glaciers are melting, including formerly stable glaciers in Tibet.

But for a few in Iceland and Scandinavia that are being supplemented by increased precipitation, melting rates are increasing globally.

The study, published in the journal “Nature,” is the first one to determine how all of the world's glaciers almost 220,000 in whole, except the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets – are reacting to the 21st-century climate crisis.

According to the study's lead scientist, Romain Hugonnet, a doctoral student at ETH Zurich and the University of Toulouse, "we have seen the first assessment of thinning by all individual glaciers on Earth."

“(Our results suggest that) we need to intervene now on changing climate to avert a massive change in the global water cycle that would have a significant effect on densely populated areas of the world.”

Glaciers, which are large reservoirs of ice that steadily seep their way over territory, provide fresh drinking water to millions of people throughout the world.