If greenhouse emissions carry on as they are at present, experts caution over 95 per cent of ice found in the Alps could melt away by the end of the century.
Researchers from Switzerland produced detailed simulations showing the likely futures of the glaciers in the Alps – with massive changes predicted.
Efforts to reduce our reliance on greenhouse gas could help mitigate this loss, the researchers note.
But they say 50 per cent of glacier volume will still be lost by 2050 regardless of emission controls.
The findings come a day after another study was published claiming melting glaciers around the world have contributed more than an inch to the world’s rising sea levels.
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Switzerland’s Pizol glacier, pictured in both 2006 and 2018. Projected rates of ice volume loss anticipate that this small glacier will completely disappear by 2100
In the new study, researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich created new computer models of ice flow and melting processes – coupled with observational data from the around 4,000 Alpine glaciers – to determine how the icy masses would change in the future under different greenhouse gas emission scenarios.
The researchers are presenting their findings this week at the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna, Austria.
The researchers set the year 2017 as a baseline for their study, at which point in time the Alpine glaciers had a total ice volume of around 24 cubic miles (100 cubic kilometres).
In a future with limited warming – dubbed RCP2.6 – greenhouse gas emissions would peak over the next few years before rapidly declining.
In this scenario, warming over pre-industrial conditions could be kept below 2°C (35.6°F) by the end of the current century.
This would result in the Alpine glaciers being reduced by only just under two-thirds – leaving them at around 9 cubic miles (37 cubic kilometres) in volume, the researchers report.
At 14 miles (23 kilometres) long, the Aletsch Glacier is the largest ice body in the European Alps. It has a present area of 12 square miles (80 square kilometres) and an estimated volume of around 3 cubic miles (12 cubic kilometres)
However, under a high-emission future – dubbed RCP8.5 – atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations would continue to rise rapidly over the next few decades.
‘In this pessimistic case, the Alps will be mostly ice free by 2100, with only isolated ice patches remaining at high elevation, representing 5 per cent or less of the present-day ice volume,’ says glaciologist and paper author Matthias Huss.
At present, greenhouse gas concentrations are slightly above the emission rate projected in the high-emission scenario.
This graph shows the predicted changes in Alpine glacier volumes under various scenarios. The thin lines represent glacier evolution for a given future climate simulation, whereas the thick lines represent the mean from all simulations for a given emissions target. The dotted line represents the year 2017
In any case, the simulations, published in the journal The Cryosphere, all predict that the Alps will lose around half of their present ice volume by 2050.
There are two reasons for this. Firstly, the increases in mean global temperature as a result of increasing greenhouse gases will become more pronounced in the latter half of the century.
At the same time, glaciers respond slowly to changing climate conditions; many alpine glaciers – especially at lower elevations – presently have excess ice volumes that reflect the colder climates of the past.
Switzerland’s Plaine Morte glacier (pictured, with a supraglacial pond atop it) is the largest plateau glacier in the Alps
Substantial ice loss will have a large impact on the Alps, given the important role that glaciers play in the region’s economy, ecosystem and landscape.
Freshwater reserves in glacial ice provide a water source for local plants and animals, to support farming and to fuel hydroelectric power stations, which play a significant role in energy production during the warm and dry summer months.
Glaciers are also popular tourist attractions that bring people to the region.
This enormous moulin – a near-vertical well in the ice – delivers water from an ice-dammed lake to the base of the Plaine Morte glacier during annual drainage
‘Glaciers in the European Alps and their recent evolution are some of the clearest indicators of the ongoing changes in climate,’ said paper author Daniel Farinotti.
After 2050, added study leader Harry Zekollari, ‘the future evolution of glaciers will strongly depend on how the climate will evolve,’
‘In [the] case of a more limited warming, a far more substantial part of the glaciers could be saved,’ he concludes.
Researchers from Zurich found Global warming is causing glaciers to melt which has boosted sea levels by more than an inch (27 mm) since 1961.
Based on their findings, the authors suggest that glaciers could almost disappear in some mountain ranges by 2100 (including the Caucasus, Central Europe, Western Canada and the USA and New Zealand).
Glaciers, not including the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets, account for more than 40,000 cubic miles (170,000 cubic kilometres) of water.
Glaciers in Alaska, Patagonia and in the Arctic regions were found to contribute the most to glacier ice loss.
Global mass loss of glacier ice has increased significantly in the last 30 years and narrowed it down to a ten year window spanning from 2006 to 2016.
This revealed a worrying statistic that 335 billion tons of ice is lost each year from glaciers alone.
This corresponds to an increase in sea levels of almost 1 millimetre per year.
‘Globally, we lose about three times the ice volume stored in the entirety of the European Alps – every single year!’ says glaciologist Dr Zemp, who published the data in Nature.
