Overview
- An ETH Zurich–led analysis in Nature Climate Change projects a global 'peak glacier extinction' mid-century, rising from roughly 1,000 losses per year today to about 2,000 at 1.5°C by 2041, ~3,000 at ~2.7°C between 2040 and 2060, and up to 4,000 in the mid‑2050s at 4°C.
- Under current policy trajectories of roughly 2.7°C warming, only about one in five of the world’s ~200,000 glaciers would remain by 2100, compared with roughly 55% at 1.5°C and 63% at 2°C.
- Central Europe emerges as an early hotspot, with the Alps projected to lose about 97% of glaciers this century at ~2.7°C and to hit their regional peak disappearance within the next decade.
- Western Canada and the United States could see about 96% of glaciers vanish under ~2.7°C, while regions with larger ice bodies like Greenland and Antarctica’s periphery peak later in the century.
- The study links widespread disappearances to risks for water supplies serving roughly 2 billion people, an estimated ~25 cm contribution to sea-level rise from glacier melt this century, and mounting threats to tourism, cultural heritage and hazard management, and it publishes a glacier-by-glacier survival database.