A recent study confirms that the world's glaciers are locked into a trajectory of significant ice loss over hundreds of years, even under the most optimistic climate scenarios.
Glaciers Face Inevitable Melting, Research Indicates
Glaciers Face Inevitable Melting, Research Indicates
New study reveals that glaciers will continue to shrink for centuries, regardless of climate action.
According to a study published on Thursday, the future of global glaciers appears grim, as they remain on course to lose significant masses of ice over the centuries ahead, irrespective of present climate mitigation efforts. Researchers estimate that even if global temperatures miraculously stabilized at their current levels for the next thousand years—an unlikely scenario—glaciers outside major ice sheets could still diminish by approximately one-third.
However, the study also presents a glimmer of hope, suggesting that if global warming is restricted to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, it could help retaining double the amount of glacial ice over the next millennium in comparison to a 2.7 degrees Celsius increase. “Every fraction of a degree less of warming contributes to preserving glacial ice,” stated Lilian Schuster, a glacial modeling expert at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, who co-authored the research featured in the journal Science.
Although vast ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica dominate discussions around climate change due to their potential to raise sea levels significantly, the glaciers situated in mountain ranges and around the margins of ice sheets play a notable, albeit smaller, role in the global climate discourse. Representing less than half of 1 percent of the Earth’s ice, the melting of these glaciers could still contribute roughly one foot to global sea levels, posing risks to coastal habitats worldwide.
