Alarming forecast: by what year will half of the glaciers disappear

Scientists from ETH Zurich and the Free University of Brussels have created an interactive map that predicts the fate of each glacier. With warming of 1.5°C by 2100, half of the glaciers will disappear; at 2.7°C, only 20% will remain; at 4°C, just 10%. The map allows users to see the disappearance timelines of specific glaciers.

Scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) and the Free University of Brussels have presented an interactive map that predicts the fate of every glacier on Earth based on global warming scenarios. The modeling shows that even with a minimal temperature increase of 1.5°C by the end of the century, half of the glaciers will disappear—about two thousand glacial objects will vanish annually. With warming of 2.7°C, only 20% of glaciers will survive, and under the worst-case scenario of 4°C, no more than 10% will remain. The map allows users to zoom in on any mountain region and obtain a detailed profile of each glacier: area, elevation range, and predicted year of complete disappearance. Color coding indicates status: dark red—glacier already gone, orange—will disappear in the coming decades, blue—has a chance to survive until 2100. Co-author of the study, Dr. Lander Van Tricht, noted that abstract numbers often fail to convey the drama of the situation, so the scientists visualized the data. The article references a publication in Daily Mail.

Alarming forecast: by what year will half of the glaciers disappear