Overview

• The International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI) warns that a global temperature increase of just 2 degrees Celsius this century will cause irreversible harm to ice sheets, glaciers, snow, sea ice and permafrost, and accelerate sea level rise.
• The ICCI calls on nations attending the COP28 climate summit to define 1.5 degrees as the upper limit for global warming, a tighter limit than the 2 degrees agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
• Sea level rise, driven by ice loss from glaciers and ice sheets, exposes millions more people to flooding and creates massive economic harms.
• Almost 2 billion people in Asia rely on meltwater from mountain glaciers and snow for irrigation, drinking water and electricity generation, which is threatened by the current global warming trajectory.
• The melting of permafrost is now emitting around the same amount of greenhouse gases as a top-10 emitting country, potentially increasing if critical climate targets are missed.