An ICCI-UNEP report, about the impacts of the temporary breach of the 1.5-degree warming threshold in the near future on earth's ice sheets and glaciers, indicates that the crisis is closer to home and not confined to remote regions, a lead author of the report said on Monday.
In an interview with PTI Videos, James Kirkham, Chief Scientist at the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI) and coordinating lead author of the report, said that further increases in temperature would significantly intensify many impacts and could lock in several of the most severe ones.
Produced by the ICCI, in coordination with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), 'Overshoot and the Cryosphere' is a thematic companion report to UNEP's recent 'Limiting Overshoot' report.
While the 'Limiting Overshoot' report warns that global temperatures are set to temporarily cross the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold above pre-industrial levels within the next few years, 'Overshoot and the Cryosphere' report explains the implications of overshoot, peak and decline for the Cryosphere -- portions of the Earth's surface where water is in solid, frozen form such as glaciers, ice sheets, sea ice, etc.
"Hundreds of millions of people will be affected by rising seas in the coming decades, and the accelerating rate of sea level rise poses a serious adaptation challenge. The loss of mountain glaciers is also creating water scarcity and hazards, as in Nepal in August, where floods caused by a collapsing mountainside and glacier killed thousands, causing damage equivalent to 10 per cent of the country's GDP in a single event," Kirkham told PTI.
Sea ice loss can also contribute to extreme weather, including droughts, floods and wildfires that parts of the world witnessed this summer, he added.
Warning that the global impacts are already here and affecting everyone, Kirkham, who is also a science advisor to the 20-nation Ambition on Melting Ice (AMI) high-level group, noted that the growing prevalence of hazards in mountain regions, and their effects downstream, pose an extremely high near-term risk and must be addressed rapidly in the response over the coming decades.
"I was shocked to see the images from Nepal in 2026, and from Sikkim in 2023, but not surprised. That's because as temperatures continue to rise, the mountains are destabilising, and floods and events like this become more likely. Permafrost, which is the frozen glue holding those high mountain areas together, begins to thaw, and we end up with more landslides, more avalanches and more of these collapse events, which can affect downstream communities enormously," he said.
Having undertaken multiple field campaigns in Antarctica and High-Mountain Asia, Kirkham's research expertise spans the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, snowpack and glacier monitoring in the Himalayas, and the deglaciation of the ice sheets which used to cover Europe.
Explaining the compounding impact of melting glaciers on long-term water security, he said that melting ice initially increases water volumes, but the water dries up once the glaciers begin to dwindle, with implications for agriculture, drinking water, irrigation and power supply, as many hydropower plants are fed by glacier and snow melt in the summer.
"There's also a dual element to this. If we look back at what happened in Sikkim (in 2023), where a power plant was destroyed, and at the infrastructure destroyed in the Nepal floods, many of these hazards can damage power infrastructure. That infrastructure is really critical for nations moving away from fossil fuels towards renewables -- which is exactly what we need to prevent and slow down these impacts from the loss of the cryosphere," Kirkham told PTI.
Speaking about the policy recommendations in the report, he referred to the examples of the disasters in India and Nepal in recent years and emphasised that there is huge value in deploying early warning systems and monitoring these high mountain and other cryosphere hazards to minimise the impacts on people.
"One of the recommendations of the report is that the local people who are affected by this need to be included from the very beginning as those systems are designed. We can't just place and implement these systems on them; they have to be really brought in. That way, if they notice changes, they can contribute by setting off these early warning systems, understand the risks they're facing, and what can be done to minimise them," he said.
Asked how essential cross-border data-sharing mechanisms are to averting such crises, Kirkham said they are vital, as many impacts of ice loss are transboundary by nature, making knowledge-sharing on sudden-onset hazards, such as glacier lake outburst floods and ice-rock avalanches from the high mountains, critical. He cited the Nepal disaster, which affected both China and Nepal and also had downstream impacts in India.
He further called for scaling up existing monitoring systems to better target and understand the hazards, adding that multiple nations need to cooperate on this work.
"It's a global problem, and it requires a global response to limit emissions, slow the rate of loss and build resilience, often across borders," the chief scientist at ICCI told PTI.
With a week to go for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP31) in Antalya, Kirkham stressed that scientists would keep bringing forward the message that further delay worsens the impacts and raises costs in the long run, adding that this year's visibility of ice-loss impacts should be a wake-up call for global leaders.
Expressing hope that the best available science would inform policy, he said the way forward lay in a step up in political ambition and long-sighted leadership.
