Nearly 40% Of Planet's Glaciers Are Already Doomed To Melt; At Current 2.7C Warming Trajectory, We Will Lose 75%

[hatrack]

Almost 40% of glaciers in existence today are already doomed to melt due to climate-heating emissions from fossil fuels, a study has found. The loss will soar to 75% if global heating reaches the 2.7C rise for which the world is currently on track. The massive loss of glaciers would push up sea levels, endangering millions of people and driving mass migration, profoundly affecting the billions reliant on glaciers to regulate the water used to grow food, the researchers said.

However, slashing carbon emissions and limiting heating to the internationally agreed 1.5C target would save half of glacier ice. That goal is looking increasingly out of reach as emissions continue to rise, but the scientists said that every tenth-of-a-degree rise that was avoided would save 2.7tn tonnes of ice.

Glaciers in the western US and Canada were severely affected, the study found, with 75% already doomed to melt. Those in the high, cold mountains of the Hindu Kush and Karakoram ranges are more resilient but will still shrink significantly as global temperatures rise. Unlike previous studies, the research uses multiple models of glaciers to examine their fate well beyond the end of the century. About 20% of glaciers were already known to be doomed to melt by 2100, but the longer term view revealed that the total glacier loss that is already inevitable is 39%.

EDIT

The proportion of doomed glaciers varies widely around the world, with 80% of glaciers in the southern part of Arctic Canada already destined to melt, while only 5% of the glaciers in the western part of the Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalaya mountain chain are currently consigned to history. The situation is grim at 2.7C of global heating: all but seven of the 19 major glacier regions of the world eventually lose at least 80% of glaciers, from central Europe to the eastern Himalaya chain. Glaciers would vanish from the Russian Arctic, the western US and Iceland.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/29/almost-40-of-worlds-glaciers-already-doomed-due-to-climate-crisis-study

[markodochartaigh]

1. Due to the latent heat of fusion of water,

(it takes about 80 times as much energy to turn ice at 0°C to water at 0°C as it does to raise the same amount of water 1°C), ice is an incredible heat sink. And less than 5% of anthropogenic warming goes into melting glaciers.

Sea level rise is already a problem for Miami, New Orleans, Kolkata, Lagos, etc. But by the time enough excess anthropogenic energy has been added to our biosphere to raise sea level more than a couple of meters from glacial melting and ice shelf destabilization, enough energy will have been released into the atmosphere to cause serial cereal grain harvest failures and lethal wet bulb temperatures killing billions.

[Martin Eden]

2. There's an easy solution to this:

Fire the scientists!

[multigraincracker]

3. I think the Earth can only support about1/3 of

the current human population.
We are like yeast in fruit juice, eat, shit and reproduce until we poison ourselves