Glacial Retreat Case Study

Part A:
1) In the Himalayas due to the rising temperature in the Himalayas, the glaciers are melting at a faster rate than the rest of the world. Warmer summers and less snow in the winters will cause a negative mass balance and the glaciers will retreat.
In the Glacier National Park, mountain snowpacks hold less water and melt two weeks earlier in the spring, this drastically impacts wildlife drinking water. Some of the parks glaciers might actually vanish in a few decades and if the climate continues, all of them could disappear as well. In the Antarctic Peninsula, warming has been much slower in spring and summer than in fall and winter, but has been impactful. Seasonal snow coverage has decreased, floating ice shelves have been lost, and glacier termini have retreated.

2) Social: The impacts could consist of a loss of tourists wanting to visit the area and therefore meaning that locals who live near the glacier may miss out on extra income from tourism. Other factors are unreliable snowfall which could result in there not being enough snow for winter sports such as skiing and snowboarding. This could cause a sharp increase of unemployment would arise in these areas and locals may be forced to move away to look for work in more residential areas.  
Environmental: The impacts are at a global scale could contribute to sea-level rise, a change with significant consequences in coastal areas around the globe. However, some small areas near mountains with melting glaciers could have small rivers and other water resources overflow and flood. In a long term stand point most regions of the world, glaciers are now providing less water than before to the rivers immediately below them, reducing the availability of an important resource.
Economic: This would be really impacted and have lots of tourism and water resources shut down which means losses of businesses causing unemployment. Also, damages could happen if floods are to happen and if it gets really bad there could also be people who become homeless, but that is very unlikely to happen. 

Part B:
Lots of the tourist attractions involving glaciers will be greatly affected as they melt and retreat away. The tourism industry will go down dramatically and money would become harder to come by with business depleting. Also, with less snow falling because of warmer weather and the melting ice will make it less likely to have huge snowfalls meaning harder to run winter sports such as snowboarding and skiing. This could have a major impact on future winter olympics.

Part C:
The general impacts of glacial retreat have occured worldwide affecting the availability of fresh water for irrigation and domestic use, mountain recreation, animals and plants. These all depend on glacier-melt, and in the longer term and to some extent so does the level of the oceans. In areas that are heavily dependent on water runoff from glaciers that melt during the warmer summer months, a continuation of the current retreat will eventually deplete the glacial ice and substantially reduce or eliminate runoff. A reduction in runoff will affect the ability to irrigate crops and will reduce summer stream flows necessary to keep dams and reservoirs replenished.