Environment · News · Long View
Ice-sheet loss would remain after warming falls to 1.5 degrees
The Guardian account puts the report's current-policy path at 2.8 degrees, with less than 10 percent of glacier ice left in the Rockies, the Alps, Iceland, and Scandinavia, and about 20 to 35 percent left on a 1.5 degree path.
In this story
- The cryosphere report says ice-sheet loss would remain if warming falls back to 1.5 degrees.
- The Guardian account puts heating at 1.3 degrees and the authors' long-run aim under 1 degree by 2150.
- Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice about six times faster than in the 1990s, the account says.
- Hindu Kush and Himalayan glaciers would keep 41 percent of their ice on the current-policy path and 83 percent on a 1.5 degree path.
The Guardian's 2 November 2026 account of a report by 80 scientists at the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative and the UN Environment Programme says much of the ice-sheet loss would remain if warming later falls back to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The Guardian account puts heating since pre-industrial times at 1.3 degrees and says the scientists want the long run brought under 1 degree by 2150. It says ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica are losing mass about six times faster than they did in the 1990s, and that this loss would continue after a short spell above 1.5 degrees. The same account says that if heating were brought back to 0.8 degrees and held there, glaciers would retain about 70 percent of today's volume across centuries.
The Guardian account says glaciers in the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas water nearly a quarter of the world's people. It says that on the path tied to policies now in force, 41 percent of that ice mass would remain, and that a path held at 1.5 degrees would leave 83 percent. It says a high overshoot with a peak near 3 degrees would thaw nearly all of the permafrost close to the surface.
James Kirkham, a glaciologist at the cryosphere initiative and a lead author of the report, told the Guardian that Switzerland has lost 20 percent of its glacier ice in the past five years.