"It's Already Too Late"... Even If Global Warming Stops Today, One-Third of the Alps Glaciers Will Disappear

One-Third Melting Confirmed Due to Climate Inertia

A study has confirmed that even if global warming stops immediately, one-third of the Alps glaciers will disappear. If warming continues at the current pace, half of the ice could vanish.

Dr. Samuel Cook's team from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland applied climate and glacier data from 2000 to 2022 to simulate changes in the Alps glaciers by 2050 using artificial intelligence (AI), according to the scientific journal Journal of Geophysical Research on the 22nd (local time).

2009 Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland
[Image source=Yonhap News]

The research team divided the Alps glaciers into 12 clusters and trained the AI by combining glacier measurement data and climate data from 2000 to the present. They then simulated future changes in the Alps glaciers under three scenarios: if global warming stops immediately, if the trend of the past 22 years continues, and if the trend from 2010 to 2022 continues.

The prediction results showed that even in the scenario assuming global warming stopped in 2022, ice continued to melt due to the inertia of the climate-glacier system. As a result, the amount of ice in the Alps glaciers is expected to decrease by 34% by 2050. Applying the warming and Alps glacier change data from 2000 to 2022, the ice melting rate accelerated, with 46% of the Alps glaciers disappearing by 2050. Using data from 2010 to 2022, 65% of the Alps glaciers vanished. The disappearance of the Alps glaciers would significantly impact Swiss residents, social infrastructure, and water resource availability.

Dr. Cook said, "The prediction results obtained from this study are very optimistic," adding, "They are far from realistic future scenarios, and since this study only used data up to 2022, it is highly likely that the glaciers will melt much more than the simulation results."