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Figure 64. Figure 64.—A, Glacier mass-balance turnover dramatically increased after 1987, and annual variability decreased at the same time. B, The mass-balance sensitivity to the globally averaged air temperature also has increased, accompanied by a decrease in annual variability at about the same time. Northern hemisphere glacier mass balances are used to calculate sensitivity to annual air temperature. Long-term annual mass-balance time series averaged for about the same 40 benchmark glaciers have been used to calculate averages (Dyurgerov, 2001). Note that this is a different measure of sensitivity than that used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Church and Gregory, 2001); the IPCC measure involves a change between two steady states. |