Glaciers are considered one of our planet’s most precious natural features.
These slow moving rivers of ice, thousands of years old, reflect the sun’s rays back into space and store valuable freshwater.
But a new study warns that more than half of the world’s glaciers could vanish by the end of this century due to climate change.
Scientists from ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium have predicted glacier loss under different carbon emissions scenarios.
Their study accounted for all the world’s glaciers – approximately 200,000 in total.
Under a high emissions scenario, up to 54 per cent of all glaciers could vanish, while this figure in the Alps could be more like 75 per cent.
Across the Alps, high-mountain glaciers one offered skiing all year round for holiday makers, but climate change is altering this.
It follows Italy and Switzerland having to redraw their border due to melting glaciers.
Glaciers around the world are shrinking at an alarming rate, the new study reveals. Pictured, Field work on the Findelen glacier in Switzerland
‘Glaciers are crucial in many parts of the world, and as such, glacier changes directly impact our society and the natural environment,’ lead study author Professor Harry Zekollari, a glaciologist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, told MailOnline.
‘Locally, glaciers can lead to natural hazards, they have an important touristic value, and they determine local water supply.’
A major concern is the effect of melting glaciers on rising sea levels, which in turn increases the risk of towns and cities flooding, especially those nearer the coast.
Glacier loss also depletes freshwater resources that millions of people depend on for drinkable water.
‘Water supply from glaciers (and how this supply changes) will impact biodiversity and water availability for industry, agriculture, and households,’ Professor Zekollari said.
But it also means Earth turns from shining white to a duller green, reducing the planet’s ‘albedo’ – its ability to reflect sunlight.
Instead of the highly reflective white ice, the exposed plant and rock has a lower albedo, meaning it absorbs more energy from the sun rather than reflects.
This only increases the risk of the Earth getting warmer, exacerbating climate change – which scientists describe as a ‘runaway effect’.
A glacier is simply the accumulation of snow compacted over thousands of years to become solid ice. Pictured, glaciologists at the Rhone Glacier covered by sheets near Goms, Switzerland, on June 16, 2023
A view shows the Iver glacier close to the El Plomo mountain summit, in the Andes mountain range, in the Santiago Metropolitan Region, Chile, April 4, 2024
Since the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions have raised global temperatures.
As a result, most of the the world’s glaciers have been rapidly melting and shrinking – or disappearing altogether – as the climate warms.
To predict future glacier loss, the researchers looked at historical glacier masses, carbon emissions and temperature data.
Using computer modelling, they were able to predict how the glaciers could continue to lose mass in response to climate change.
‘By modeling glacier evolution throughout the 21st century under various climate scenarios, we found stark differences in outcomes depending on future emission levels,’ said Professor Zekollari.
In an optimistic scenario of low carbon emissions, glaciers will lose 25 per cent to 29 per cent of their mass by 2100, the team found.
However, under a high-emission scenario, that figure rises to somewhere between 46 per cent and 54 per cent.
Pictured, projected glacier loss in different regions and under different emissions scenarios. The highest emissions scenario is plotted in dark red
Glacier loss will vary significantly by region but those in the European Alps are some of the most vulnerable, the study reports.
The team’s projections suggest glaciers in the European Alps will experience more than 75 per cent volume loss under high-emission scenarios.
Polar regions such as Arctic Canada, Iceland, and Svalbard are expected to retain a larger part of their glacier mass to the end of the century but will also face considerable loss.
In their paper, published in The Cryosphere, the team warn that there are still ‘uncertainties in the projected glacier evolution’.
‘Despite some differences at the regional scale and a slightly more pronounced sensitivity to changing climatic conditions, our results agree well with the recent projections,’ they say.
‘Projecting the global evolution of glaciers is crucial to quantify future sea-level rise and changes in glacier-fed rivers,’ they say
They also stress that the study looked specifically at glaciers, not ice sheets.
Ice sheets are masses of glacial ice extending more than 19,000 square miles (50,000 square kilometers).
The Greenland Ice Sheet (pictured). The two ice sheets on Earth today cover most of Greenland and Antarctica
There are two ice sheets on Earth – the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Ice Sheet – and together they contain about 99 per cent of the freshwater on Earth.
‘While the ice sheets contain way more mass indeed, they react on longer time scales,’ Professor Zekollari told MailOnline.
‘As a consequence, their contribution to sea-level rise is about the same (or even slightly less) than from the 200,000 glaciers.
‘So the ice sheets do matter a lot – particularly on the longer term (post 2100) – but modelling them is done by other researchers.
‘For us it is indeed the crucial that all numbers by us and other researchers are combined to get the full sea-level rise picture.’
