By Abbas Nazil
Mountain glaciers around the world are disappearing at unprecedented rates due to climate change, posing severe risks to water supplies, agriculture, and energy production, scientists have warned.
The United Nations has declared 2025 the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation, highlighting the critical role glaciers play in sustaining water, food, and livelihoods for millions of people globally.
According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report, mountain glaciers lost an average of 267 gigatons of ice per year between 2000 and 2020, while the World Glacier Monitoring Service reported that 2023 marked the fastest recorded year of glacier loss in history.
Experts predict catastrophic outcomes under current warming scenarios.
Even if global temperatures rise only 1.5°C, half of all mountain glaciers are projected to vanish by the end of the century.
At 2°C of warming, 60 to 70 percent are expected to disappear, and at 3°C nearly all mountain glaciers could be lost.
Professor Orhan Ince of Istanbul Technical University, scientific director of the TerrArctic Mega Grant Project, warned that high-mountain ecosystems are undergoing rapid and largely irreversible transformations due to global warming, changing precipitation patterns, and intensified extreme weather events.
Ince noted that glaciers in regions such as the Himalayas, the European Alps, Alaska–Yukon, and Türkiye have already lost substantial ice volumes, with some areas experiencing reductions of 40 to 65 percent over recent decades.
The retreat of glaciers increases the risk of geological hazards including landslides, flash floods, and glacial lake outburst floods, while destabilizing ecosystems and disrupting atmospheric circulation.
In Türkiye, glaciers on Mount Agri, the Cilo-Sat range, Kackar Mountains, and Mount Erciyes have shrunk dramatically, threatening agricultural irrigation, hydropower production, and water availability for local communities.
Ince highlighted that Arctic warming, occurring three to four times faster than the global average, is altering precipitation and temperature patterns across mountain ranges from the South Caucasus to the Himalayas.
He cautioned that glacier-fed water loss could force at least 30 million people to leave their homes between 2030 and 2050.
To slow glacier decline, Ince called for immediate high-resolution monitoring using satellites, Lidar, GNSS, and drones, coupled with national early-warning systems for flash floods and glacial lake outbursts.
He emphasized that drastic global reductions in CO2 and black carbon emissions are essential, warning that without these actions, extreme glacier loss will become a permanent reality after 2050.