Ice Cold Truths – Time to Face Hidden Ice Risks!

Ice Cold Truths – Time to Face Hidden Ice Risks! 2°C is too hot for ice yet global warming for the 12 months to February 2025 has soared to 1.59°C. Worse still, a new paper warns of a 10-30% chance of breaching 2°C by 2040-2060! It’s all looking very very bad for our cryosphere.

So this month, on the back of our “13-Factsheet Guide to Stop the Melt” we tackle some ice cold truths as we share 5 hopes and fears for ice, talk to China’s leading cryosphere expert on what China is doing for ice, and deep dive with global experts to unpack the new “very likely” worst-case sea level rise projections of 1.9m by 2100.

OK, let’s start with sea level rise. 1.9m would be existential for many coastal capitals across Asia, let alone small island nations. Yet this is the new worst-case projection revealed by a paper led by Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, which used a new fusion method to estimate the probability of different outcomes that factors in ice sheet processes & full uncertainty ranges.

The high end of this range should help address the question “What high-end sea-level rise should we plan for?” Don’t take this from us – hear from the authors of this new method directly! Find out more from Dr. Grandey and Professor Horton.

Clearly, no one wants multi-metre sea level rise and, on this front, it’s worth noting what the authors say – that we still have a choice … if we can limit warming to below 2°C, the probability of 1.9m of SLR by 2100 will shrink to less than 0.2%.

There is hope but it’s up to us. But, we are not going to act if we don’t know what’s at stake. How many of us know that sea level rise is accelerating due to fast melting glaciers & ice sheets or from thermal expansion from accelerated ocean heating? We cannot solve what we don’t know which is why it was important for us to show you what’s happening in our cryosphere with our “13-Factsheet Guide to Stop the Melt”.

We’ve been losing over 50 million tonnes of ice every hour for the last 30 years. Yet, this shocking loss has stayed out of sight & out of mind; apart from a group of worried scientists, no one else is talking about it! So check out what’s really happening in Greenland & Antarctica and don’t forget permafrost thaw or massive shifts in sea ice; even ski resorts are not immune.

Our cryosphere today is in a precarious state. We absolutely cannot allow it to deteriorate more because seas will rise faster and vanishing glaciers will affect our ice reserves impacting our water resources. If emissions continue, we could lose up to 80% of HKH glaciers by 2100, and we could face peak water for HKH rivers even sooner, by 2050.

Impacts can literally be earth changing as around two-thirds of planetary tipping points are related to our cryosphere! So, get on top of these “hidden risks” now and Let’s Stop the Melt!

We’re not ice scientists so to unpack the complex science we needed help. On this front, we’re honoured to have worked with top cryosphere scientists/institutes at the front lines of climate change from our poles to high mountains in the Himalayas. A VERY BIG THANK YOU to ICCI, CNC-IACS, IGSNRR-CAS & ICIMOD … thank you all for providing guidance & reviewing the factsheets plus your patience in helping us unpack complex science into plain speak!

China has also been stepping up efforts on cryospheric sciences. Here, we sat down with Professor Shichang Kang, the Chair of the Chinese National Committee for International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (CNC-IACS) to hear what he has to say on the impacts of glacier melt from water scarcity to floods, popular science and more.

Professor Kang also lays out China’s cryospheric research landscape – where is the State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Science? What is the 973 Project? What’s the purpose of CNC-ICAS? Are policymakers and decision-makers recognizing the importance of glaciers and integrating them into water management? The answers are in our interview.

We can still save our cryosphere, there is still time, there is still hope but we must act now and act quickly to decarbonise. There is no time to waste – even in the last year, the ice landscape has been shifting fast – we share our 5 hopes & fears from the possibility of an earlier collapse of AMOC to the probability of geoengineering. Worst still, wildfires rage spewing out even more emissions.

But we remain hopeful as China & the rest of Asia play critical roles to Stop the Melt. We CAN & MUST – we CAN because with over 50% of global GHG emission Asia can deliver deep decarbonisation this decade. And China has just shown it’s possible with its 2024 clean energy add of over 500TWh – this additional power in 2024 alone can power the whole of Indonesia & Malaysia!

And we MUST because Asia is the region most vulnerable to ice losses due to the importance of our Himalayan Water Towers & exposure to fast rising seas. We must develop with these pervasive chronic risks & rapid ice melt in mind and urgently act to save our freshwater ice banks & slow sea level rise. Indeed, Asia is in a unique position to leapfrog ahead on transition as well as step up adaptation action to match escalating risks.

There is no time to waste. Fires are burning in Japan & South Korea while Jakarta floods from torrential rain. Seas are also rising faster – the rate of sea level rise has doubled in the last 30 years and if high emissions continue can be 1m by 2070. Even at this level, rising seas will redraw coastlines, impact at least 200 million Asians, sink low-lying coastal capitals and 12 of the Top 15 global oil ports and cause coastal blackouts.

With our planetary ecosystems at risk, we stand at a crossroad. What we do in the next few years on transition & adaptation will decide our futures. The dire state of our cryosphere brings a torrent of “hidden” risks we must attend to. It’s daunting but we must start somewhere.

Tackling complex challenges starts with conversations and we need to start one on ice now – it’s high time we faced the ice cold truths about our cryosphere – get the BIG PICTURE on ice now and join us to STOP the MELT.