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As climate change accelerates, scientists say the planet is approaching peak glacier extinction, a period when the rate of glacier disappearance reaches its maximum. A new study published in Nature Climate Change finds that between 2,000 and 4,000 glaciers per year could disappear by mid-century, depending on future greenhouse gas emissions, a pace of loss never recorded in modern history.For scientists, this looming peak is no longer an abstract projection. It is already visible in mountain regions where glaciers that once defined landscapes have disappeared entirely.
When a glacier disappears, completely
One of the most widely known examples came in 2019, when hundreds of people gathered in Switzerland to mark the death of the Pizol glacier.The glacier, estimated to be about 700 years old, had been reduced by human-driven climate change to scattered chunks of ice. Organizers held a symbolic funeral. Mourners wore black. Flowers were laid. A priest spoke.Pizol was not the first glacier to vanish. Scientists say it represents a pattern that is now unfolding globally, and accelerating.Thousands of glaciers have already disappeared over the past few decades, and the new research suggests the rate of these losses is set to rise sharply in the years ahead.
Why scientists are counting glacier “extinctions”
Glacier research has traditionally focused on how much ice is lost as temperatures rise. Less attention has been paid to how many individual glaciers disappear entirely.That’s partly because the metric is difficult to track. Definitions vary, and smaller or debris-covered glaciers can be hard to detect. Current estimates suggest there are more than 200,000 glaciers worldwide.But the study’s authors argue that tracking complete glacier loss is essential to understanding the full impact of climate change.It shows “climate change does not just lead to some ice melt, but it leads to the complete extinction of many glaciers,” said Matthias Huss, a study author and glaciologist at ETH Zürich, who spoke at Pizol’s funeral in 2019.
What “Peak Glacier Extinction” means
Using a global glacier database, the researchers modeled the future of individual glaciers under multiple warming scenarios. They defined glacier extinction as the point when a glacier becomes too small to qualify as one, either when its area drops below 0.01 square kilometers or when its volume falls to less than 1% of its size around the year 2000.Their goal was to identify peak glacier extinction, the period during which the greatest number of glaciers disappear each year.The timing and severity of that peak depend largely on how much the planet warms.
How warming levels change the timeline
If global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, glacier extinction would peak around 2041, with roughly 2,000 glaciers disappearing per year. Scientists note the world is not currently on track to meet that target.At 4 degrees of warming, peak glacier extinction shifts to the mid-2050s, with losses reaching around 4,000 glaciers per year, three to five times higher than today’s global rate.Under current climate pledges, the world is heading toward approximately 2.7 degrees of warming. At that level, glacier extinction is expected to unfold over a longer period, with around 3,000 glaciers disappearing each year between 2040 and 2060.
Some regions face faster losses than others
The study also highlights stark regional differences.In areas dominated by smaller glaciers, including the European Alps, parts of the Andes, and North Asia, more than half of all glaciers are expected to disappear within the next two decades, with peak extinction arriving earlier, around 2040.Regions with larger glaciers, such as Greenland and the Russian Arctic, are expected to reach peak glacier extinction later in the century.
What’s left by 2100
The long-term survival of glaciers depends heavily on future emissions.At 2.7 degrees of warming, only about 20% of today’s glaciers are expected to remain by 2100. Limiting warming to 1.5 degrees could preserve roughly half. At 4 degrees, scientists project near-total glacier loss.“This study does a great job at highlighting the fact not only are glaciers melting worldwide, many of them may be entirely gone in the coming decades; and the trend is accelerating,” said Eric Rignot, professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the research.“It is a point of no return, because reforming a glacier would take decades if not centuries,” he told CNN.Beyond their role in water supplies, glaciers support tourism, local economies, and cultural identity in mountain regions.“They are really icons of climate change,” said Harry Zekollari, a study author and glaciologist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium. “If you go to someone, you talk to them on the street about the fact that temperatures have risen by 2 degrees, it’s really difficult to picture, but glaciers, they’re so visual.”
