Glaciers to Melt

 

Half the planet’s glaciers will have melted by 2100 even if humanity sticks to goals set out in the Paris climate agreement, according to research that finds the scale and impacts of glacial loss are greater than previously thought. At least half of that loss will happen in the next 30 years.

 49% of glaciers would disappear under the most optimistic scenario of 1.5C of warming. However, if global heating continued under the current scenario of 2.7C of warming, losses would be more significant, with 68% of glaciers disappearing, according to the paper, published in Science. 

There would be almost no glaciers left in central Europe, western Canada and the US by the end of the next century if this happened. Small glaciers are an important source of water and livelihood for millions of people.

Mountain glacier melt is believed to contribute to more than a third of sea level rise. This will significantly contribute to sea level rise, threaten the supply of water of up to 2 billion people, and increase the risk of natural hazards such as flooding. If temperature increases are limited to 1.5C of warming, average sea levels would increase by 90mm (3.5in) from 2015 to 2100, but with 2.7C of warming, glacial melt would lead to around 115mm of sea level rise. These scenarios are up to 23% more than previous models had estimated.

 Researchers wrote: “The rapidly increasing glacier mass losses as global temperature increases beyond 1.5C stresses the urgency of establishing more ambitious climate pledges to preserve the glaciers in these mountainous regions.”

Half of glaciers will be gone by 2100 even under Paris 1.5C accord, study finds | Glaciers | The Guardian