Asia’s glaciers will melt sharply from global warming by century’s end: climate study

Asia’s mountain glaciers will lose at least a third of their mass through global warming by century’s end, with dire consequences for millions of people who rely on them for fresh water, researchers said on Wednesday.

This is a best-case scenario, based on the assumption that the world manages to limit average global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels, a team wrote in the journal Nature.

“To meet the 1.5 C target will be a task of unprecedented difficulty,” the researchers said, “and even then, 36 per cent (give or take seven per cent) of the ice mass in the high mountains of Asia is projected to be lost” by 2100.

With warming of 3.5 C, 4.0 C and 6.0 C respectively, Asian glacier losses could amount to 49 per cent, 51 per cent or 65 per cent by the end of the century, according to the team’s modelling study.

The high mountains of Asia (HMA) comprise a geographical region surrounding the Tibetan plateau, holding the biggest store of frozen water outside the poles.

It feeds many of the world’s great rivers, including the Ganges, the Indus and the Brahmaputra, on which hundreds of millions of people depend.