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Nature
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Impact of a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius on Asia’s glaciers

Naturevolume 549, pages257–260 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Glaciers in the high mountains of Asia (HMA) make a substantial contribution to the water supply of millions of people1,2, and they are retreating and losing mass as a result of anthropogenic climate change3 at similar rates to those seen elsewhere4,5. In the Paris Agreement of 2015, 195 nations agreed on the aspiration to limit the level of global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius ( °C) above pre-industrial levels. However, it is not known what an increase of 1.5 °C would mean for the glaciers in HMA. Here we show that a global temperature rise of 1.5 °C will lead to a warming of 2.1 ± 0.1 °C in HMA, and that 64 ± 7 per cent of the present-day ice mass stored in the HMA glaciers will remain by the end of the century. The 1.5 °C goal is extremely ambitious and is projected by only a small number of climate models of the conservative IPCC’s Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP)2.6 ensemble. Projections for RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 reveal that much of the glacier ice is likely to disappear, with projected mass losses of 49 ± 7 per cent, 51 ± 6 per cent and 64 ± 5 per cent, respectively, by the end of the century; these projections have potentially serious consequences for regional water management and mountain communities.

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Figure 1: Relation between radiative forcing, temperature increase and ice mass loss.
Figure 2: Regional temperatures and projected glacier area associated with a 1.5 °C increase.
Figure 3: Future ice mass loss and prevalence of debris-covered glaciers.

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Acknowledgements

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement number 676819), The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research under the Innovational Research Incentives Scheme VIDI (grant agreement 016.181.308), from the Climate-KIC programme of the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT), and from the UK Government’s Department for International Development and the International Development Research Centre, Canada, through the Himalayan Adaptation, Water and Resilience (HI-AWARE) consortium. We thank E. Berthier and D. Scherler for supplying the validation data.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physical Geography, Utrecht University, PO Box 80115, Utrecht, 3508 TC, The Netherlands

    P. D. A. Kraaijenbrink, M. F. P. Bierkens & W. W. Immerzeel

  2. Deltares, Daltonlaan 600, Utrecht, 3584 BK, The Netherlands

    M. F. P. Bierkens

  3. FutureWater, Costerweg 1V, Wageningen, 6702 AA, The Netherlands

    A. F. Lutz

  4. International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), GPO Box 3226, Kathmandu, Nepal

    W. W. Immerzeel

Authors
  1. P. D. A. Kraaijenbrink

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  2. M. F. P. Bierkens

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  3. A. F. Lutz

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  4. W. W. Immerzeel

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Contributions

W.W.I., P.D.A.K. and M.F.P.B. designed the study; P.D.A.K. performed all analyses; A.F.L. contributed the climate change scenarios; P.D.A.K. and W.W.I. wrote the manuscript with suggestions from M.F.P.B. and A.F.L.

Corresponding author

Correspondence toP. D. A. Kraaijenbrink.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Reviewer InformationNature thanks J. G. Cogley and D. Farinotti for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Figures 1-17 and Supplementary Tables 1-5. (PDF 3939 kb)

Supplementary Data

This file contains animated cross sections and maps of modelled ice thickness over time for each of the four RCPs for 17 different glaciers. (ZIP 44470 kb)

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Kraaijenbrink, P., Bierkens, M., Lutz, A.et al. Impact of a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius on Asia’s glaciers.Nature549, 257–260 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature23878

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Editorial Summary

Climate target confronts glacier fate

The Paris Agreement advocates that humanity should consider limiting global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C) above pre-industrial temperatures, well below the previously discussed threshold of 2 °C. The announcement sparked a surge of research to understand the practicality and implications of the lower limit. Here, Philip Kraaijenbrink and colleagues simulate the effect of warming on the glaciers in the high mountains of Asia and show that, in a world that warms by just 1.5 °C, about 65 per cent of glacier mass will remain by 2100. But keeping warming below the 1.5 °C threshold is an ambitious goal. At the other extreme, scenarios that include continued high rates of greenhouse gas production instead suggest that only about 35 per cent of mass will remain by 2100.

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Targeting 1.5 °C

The future of Asia's glaciers

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