Overview
- The Nature Climate Change analysis builds a glacier-by-glacier survival database for roughly 215,000 glaciers, using a flowing-ice definition with a 0.01 km² threshold.
- Observed extinctions average about 1,000 per year today, with modeled peaks of around 2,000 per year at 1.5°C warming near 2041 and roughly 4,000 per year under high warming around 2055.
- Even at the most ambitious Paris target, about half of current glaciers are projected to be gone by 2100, while a worst-case path leaves only about 18,000—roughly 90 percent lost.
- Small mountain glaciers in the Alps, Pyrenees, Western Canada and the Rockies are expected to vanish within 10–20 years; the Alps alone have lost about 10 percent of volume in roughly five years.
- Researchers emphasize that limiting warming by even 0.1°C could save thousands of glaciers, though once ice retreats the altered landscapes make recovery far harder.