Explained: Will the first major real-time causality of climate change be glaciers?
According to a latest study, published on December 15, 2025, in the journal Nature Climate Change, glaciers in the European Alps are likely to reach their peak rate of extinction in only eight years.
New Delhi: Glaciers are melting worldwide due to climate change. There ideally should not be anything surprising with this statement. The wreckage of climate change is now occurring in real-time. The problem has now reached a level where glaciers in some regions could even disappear completely.
What does the study say?
According to a latest study, published on December 15, 2025, in the journal Nature Climate Change, glaciers in the European Alps are likely to reach their peak rate of extinction in only eight years. More than 100 due to melt away permanently by 2033. Also glaciers in the western US and Canada are forecast to reach their peak year of loss less than a decade later.
An international team of researchers led by ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel came up with these findings in the extremely significant study. The study for the first time calculated how many glaciers worldwide disappear each year and are likely to remain until the end of the century.
"For the first time, we've put years on when every single glacier on Earth will disappear," Lander Van Tricht, lead author of the study said. The study analysed more than 200,000 glaciers from a database of outlines derived from satellite images. The researchers used three global glacier models to assess their fate under different heating scenarios. The study estimates the 3,200 glaciers in central Europe would shrink by 87 per cent by 2100. This is if average global temperature rise is limited to 1.5C, which according to current trends is highly improbable. If then the heating is to the degree of 2.7C, the shrink would be up to 97 per cent.
The study further pointed out how, in the western US and Canada, including Alaska, about 70 per cent of today’s 45,000 glaciers are projected to vanish under 1.5C of heating. The researchers said the peak loss dates represent more than a numerical milestone. "They mark turning points with profound implications for ecosystems, water resources and cultural heritage,” they wrote.
A global glacial issue
Climate change is driving a rapid rise in average global temperatures. The effects of human-induced climate change on the planet are now being experienced in real-time and a major result of this is the swift melting of glaciers around the world.
Most mountain glaciers today are thinning and retreating, with many losing tens of metres in thickness over just a few decades.
Even polar ice masses are experiencing surface melt and increased ice loss at their edges. To compound the problem, latest research indicates that the pace of glacier melt will accelerate rapidly with time, especially as no halt in carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels is being observed or expected.
Faster melting of glaciers destabilises the weather system and, in the vicinity, increase the risk of hazards like glacial lake outburst floods, landslides, and avalanches. Glacier loss also disrupts fragile mountain and polar ecosystems and on a large scale, the reduced ice cover would also lower Earth’s reflectivity, causing more solar heat to be absorbed and further accelerating global warming.