The collision of North and South America changed the Earth's climate dramatically – and may have happened far earlier than we thought.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028161.600-united-plates-of-amer...

Mountain glaciers and ice caps are contributing significantly to present rates of sea level rise and will continue to do so over the next century and beyond. The Canadian Arctic Archipelago, located off the northwestern shore of Greenland, contains one-third of the global volume of land ice outside the ice sheets, but its contribution to sea-level change remains largely unknown. Here we show that the Canadian Arctic Archipelago has recently lost 61 ± 7 gigatonnes per year (Gt yr−1) of ice, contributing 0.17 ± 0.02 mm yr−1 to sea-level rise.

The Himalaya is the adobe of one of the world’s largest and mostly inaccessible area of glaciers outside the polar regions and provides glacier-stored water to the major Indian river basins. Various studies suggest that many of the Himalayan glaciers have receded in recent decades due to climate forcing. Temporal satellite data analysis shows that the Milam Glacier in Goriganga Basin, Kumaon Himalaya receded 1328 m laterally and 90 m vertically during 1954–2006.