Europe’s Alps on track to lose 97 percent of glaciers by century’s end, study finds

BRUSSELS — Current plans to tackle global warming will only save 3 percent of Europe’s Alpine glaciers from disappearing this century, with most melting away within the next two decades, a new study has found. 

The ice fields of Central Europe are vanishing faster than anywhere else on Earth,according to research led by Switzerland’s ETH Zurich. Overall, the scientists found that 79 percent of the world’s glaciers will not survive this century unless countries step up efforts to curb climate change. 

“The Alps as we know them nowadays will completely change by the end of the century,” Lander Van Tricht, the study’s lead author, told POLITICO.

“The landscape will be completely different. Many ski resorts will not have access to glaciers anymore … the ones we keep are so high and so steep that they are not accessible anymore. So the economy will be confronted with these changes,” he said.

“And even the small glaciers provide water downstream” for vegetation and villages, he added. “This will also change.”

Their study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, is the first to calculate the number of glaciers remaining by the year 2100 under different warming scenarios. Previous studies have focused on size or ice mass, the factors determining future sea-level rise and water scarcity, as glaciers hold 70 percent of the world’s freshwater. 

The researchers hope their findings, including a database showing the projected survival rate of each of the world’s 211,000 glaciers, will help assess climate impacts on local economies and ecosystems. 

“Even the smallest glacier in a remote valley in the Alps, even if it’s not important for sea-level rise or water resources, can have a huge importance for tourism, for example,” said Van Tricht. “Every individual glacier can matter.” 

The researchers found that 97 percent of Central European glaciers will go extinct this century if global warming hits 2.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — the temperature rise expected under governments’ current climate policies. 

That means only 110 of the region’s roughly 3,200 glaciers would survive to see the next century. Those are located in the Alps, as the region’s other mountain range, the Iberian Peninsula’s Pyrenees, is set to lose its remaining 15 glaciers by the mid-2030s. 

If the world manages to limit global warming to 1.5C or 2C, in line with the Paris Agreement, the Alps would lose 87 percent or 92 percent of glaciers, respectively. At warming of 4C, a level the world was heading toward before the 2015 climate accord was signed, 99 percent of Alpine glaciers would disappear this century, with just 20 surviving the year 2100. 

In all scenarios, however, the majority of Central European glaciers melt away in the coming two decades. The scientists write that for this region, “peak extinction” — the year when most glaciers are expected to disappear — is “projected to occur soon after 2025.” 

Glaciers located in high latitudes — such as in Iceland and Russian Arctic — or holding vast amounts of ice have the best survival chances, Van Tricht said. 

Alpine glaciers “are in general very small” and “very sensitive” to climatic changes like warmer springs, he said. The biggest ice fields, such as the Rhône glacier, will survive 2.7C of warming but not 4C, he added. 

The second-worst affected region is Western Canada and the United States, home to the Rocky Mountains, where 96 percent of the nearly 18,000 glaciers are expected to disappear this century under 2.7C of warming. 

Overall, the study projects a dramatic disappearance of glaciers around the globe: At 2.7C of warming, 79 percent of glaciers worldwide would go extinct by the end of the century, rising to 91 percent at 4C. The melt-off is expected to continue after 2100, the researchers add.

Drastic cuts in planet-warming emissions could save tens of thousands of individual glaciers, however, with the extinction rate slowing to 55 percent at 1.5C and 63 percent at 2C. 

The rate of disappearance shocked even the scientists, Van Tricht said. Around mid-century, when glacier loss reaches its peak, “we lose at a global scale 2,000 to 4,000 glaciers a year,” depending on the level of warming. “Which means that if you look at the Alps today, all the glaciers we have there, you lose that number in just one single year at the global scale.”