Even if humans stick to the goals of the Paris climate agreement, half of the planet's glaciers will have melted by the end of the century. Half of that loss will occur in the next 30 years.
Half of the glaciers would disappear under the most optimistic scenario. According to the paper, losses would be more significant if global heating continued under the current scenario. If this happened, there would be no glaciers left in central Europe, western Canada and the US.
Sea level rise, threaten the supply of water of up to 2 billion people, and increase the risk of flooding are some of the consequences of this. The study looked at all glaciers.
If temperature increases are limited to 1.5C of warming, average sea levels would increase by 90mm from 2015 to 2200, but if temperature increases are greater than 2.5C of warming, average sea levels would increase by 115mm. Previous models had estimated these scenarios differently.
Sea level rise is thought to be caused by mountain glacier melt. The magnitude of loss is directly related to temperature increases, so acting on the climate crisis is important. Glacier mass losses as global temperature increases beyond 1.5C stresses the urgent need to establish more ambitious climate pledges to preserve the glaciers in these mountainous regions.
The team used two decades of satellite data to map the planet's glaciers. Researchers can now get data points on each of the 200,000 glaciers on the planet thanks to the new models. This gave them an idea of how many would be lost under different climate change scenarios.
Dr David Rounce, the lead author of the study, said that it was the first time they had isolated the number of glaciers that would be lost. The glaciers that are going to be lost are small. They are more vulnerable to change than the total volume. The total loss of mass is less due to the fact that the relative mass is less.
Millions of people depend on small glaciers for water and sustenance. In central Europe or in high mountain Asia are the places where most people see and visit glaciers. Smaller glaciers can be found in these regions. They are at the center of the societies and economies of those places.
The Alps and the Pyrenees are some of the most affected mountains. In the Alps, glaciers are expected to be on average 70% smaller, many of the smaller ones would have already disappeared, and with significant losses in biodiversity as a result. Alpine flowers could be extinct after glaciers disappear. Mountain species are subject to extinction due to their sensitivity to global heating.
Projections of sea level rise from glaciers are more accurate than previous models. The speed of melt has doubled in the past two decades, which has led to more sea level rise than any other ice sheet in the world.
The University of Alcal's Prof Antonio de Elvira was not involved in the paper. He said that the study made a lot of the earlier data more concrete.
The water needed for agriculture in California comes from glaciers at the end of July. The disappearance of the Sierra Nevada glaciers in Spain will cause a complete reduction in water availability there from that time onwards. They rely on the Himalayan glaciers in India and China.
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