Overview
- The UNEP and ICCI reports released Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, combine peer-reviewed studies to show that present warming of about 1.37–1.4°C has already committed substantial, mostly irreversible loss of glaciers, sea ice and permafrost.
- The reports warn more than half of the world’s glaciers by number could disappear and that about one-third of glacier ice in the Hindu Kush Himalaya and Central Asia could be lost at 1.5°C, raising near-term landslide, flood and water-security risks for mountain communities.
- Analogs from past climates imply sustained 1.5°C could eventually drive global sea levels 2–9 metres higher over centuries to millennia and the reports say larger overshoots could speed sea-level rise to several centimetres per year by 2150 in some scenarios.
- Scientists say a temporary overshoot of 1.5°C would greatly increase the chance of crossing cryosphere tipping points and that, even if temperatures later fall below 1.5°C, ice recovery would take decades to centuries.
- To limit damage the reports call for rapid annual emissions cuts near 5%, faster cuts to methane and black carbon, a rapid phaseout of fossil fuels, net zero by mid-century and sustained carbon removal to minimise overshoot and enable partial recovery.