Pre-industrial glaciers need to die before the middle of the century: UNESCO and UN-broken international climate negotiations are pressing for a 1.5 degree limit
By limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, scientists believe we can save glaciers at two thirds of the parks. The global average temperature has already risen around 1.2 degrees since the industrial revolution.
In North America and around the globe, 50 UNESCO World Heritage sites are home to glaciers. A study claims that glaciers will disappear in a third by 2050 due to greenhouse gas emissions.
The list also includes some of the largest and most iconic glaciers in Central Asia and Europe as well as the last remaining glaciers in Africa, namely Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro.
The director-general of UNESCO said that the report was a call to action. It is necessary for a rapid reduction in our CO2 emissions levels to save glaciers.
Glaciers cover around 10% of land, providing fresh water supply for households, agriculture and industry downstream. Under normal conditions, they take as long as a millennium to fully form; each year, they gain mass through snow or rain, and lose mass by melting in the summer.
As water starts to melt in what we call glacial lakes, they might burst. catastrophic floods are a thing that we can see recently in Pakistan.
Thomas Slater, a glaciologist at the University of Leeds in London, noted that these glaciers are contributing a small fraction of sea level rise compared to the amount of ice loss the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets could generate. Researchers like Slater have already found those ice sheets to be the major contributors to global sea-level rise this century.
The report comes as world leaders gather in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, next week for the UN-brokered international climate negotiations, where the focus will be on getting countries to commit to stronger fossil fuel cuts that would limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. They will also discuss plans to adapt to worsening extreme weather events including heat waves, floods and storms.
“We need to really unite ourselves, to make as much as possible this 1.5 objective feasible,” Resende said. The impacts may be irreversible so it is really a pledge to take urgent action.
Only if global temperatures don’t exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial times, can the other two-thirds be saved.
The role of glaciers in climate change mitigation: the case of France and Argentina’s Los Alerces and France’s Pyrenees
France’s Pyrenees and Argentina’s Los Alerces National Park are two of the glaciers that are in danger of being extinct.
Bruno Oberle said that the melting glaciers have an impact on people as well as the environment.
“This study highlights the urgent need to cut greenhouse gas emissions and invest in Nature-based Solutions, which can help mitigate climate change and allow people to better adapt to its impacts,” he added.
As the world’s climate leaders gather for COP27, UNESCO is calling for the creation of an international fund for glacier monitoring and preservation that would support research, strengthen ties between stakeholders, and implement disaster risk and early warning measures.