The future of hundreds of millions of people across the world will be affected by declines in snow cover, sea ice, glaciers, permafrost and lake ice, said a new report launched by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) on Monday.

The report, the Global Outlook for Ice and Snow, launched to mark the World Environment Day (WED) on Tuesday, said an estimated 40 percent of the world's population could be affected by loss of snow and glaciers on the mountains of Asia.

Similar challenges are facing countries, communities, farmers and power generators in the Alps , the Andes and the Pyrenees , said the report.

It added the impacts are likely to include significant changes in the availability of water supplies for drinking and agriculture, rising sea levels affecting low lying coasts and islands and an increase in hazards such as subsidence of currently frozen land.

"The report underlines that fate of the world's snowy and icy places in a climatically challenged world should be cause for concern in every ministry, boardroom and living room across the world," UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said.

"Indeed the findings are as relevant to people living in the tropical and temperate climes- and in cities from Berlin to Brasilia - as they are for the people living in Arctic or in ice- capped mountain regions."

According to the report, melting ice and snow are also likely to increase hazards including avalanches and floods from the build up of potentially unstable glacial lakes.

"These can burst their ice and soil dams, sending walls of water down valleys at speeds close to that of a modern anti-tank missile," it said.

Rising temperature and the thawing of frozen land or 'permafrost' are triggering the expansion of existing- and the emergence of new- water bodies in places like Siberia, it says.

"These are bubbling methane into the atmosphere with emissions so forceful they can keep holes open on the lakes' icy surfaces even during sub zero winter months."

Methane is a powerful global warming gas.

"The report comes in 2007, a year in which climate change came in from the cold in terms of science, likely impacts and costs. Indeed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that the bill may be less than 0.1 per cent of global GDP a year. So overcoming the climate change challenge is the bargain of the century," said Steiner.

"The missing link is universal political action.Today's report should empower the public to take their leaders to task, should encourage them to ask how much hotter it has to get before we act on a fair and forward-looking emissions reduction deal in Bali this December," he added.

The Global Outlook for Ice and Snow, involving UNEP and a network of some 70 of the world's best experts, has been compiled in part to support the International Polar Year (IPY) running from 2007 to 2008.

The report built on and in some areas extended the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) whose fourth assessment reports were issued between February and May this year.

The Global Outlook for Ice and Snow said that unchecked climate change will aggravate the changes.

The report noted that the declines in snow will not be uniform with some climate models indicating reductions of snow of between 60 percent and 80 percent in middle latitudes like Europe by the end of the century but increases in Siberia and the Canadian Arctic at the same time.

The report said less snow and sea ice are leading to more of the sun's heat being absorbed by the land and the polar oceans which in turn may speed up global climate change.

It said that based on today's population, a one meter sea level rise would, without adaptation measures,expose some 145 million people to flooding with Asia most affected.

Source: Xinhua