Light shed on ecosystems emerging from shrinking glaciers

Still some white to be seen in canton Valais, July 2023. © Keystone / Jean-christophe Bott

Glaciers around the world could lose up to half their surface area by the end of the century, with uncertain consequences for ecosystems, a study published on Wednesday says.

Depending on the extent of global warming, an area up to eight times the size of Switzerland will become ice-free by 2100, the study published in Nature magazine said.

This will lead to one of the fastest ecosystem shifts to ever take place on earth, glaciologist Matthias Huss from the federal technology institute ETH Zurich told the Keystone-SDA news agency.

+ Read more: why melting glaciers affect us all

So far, according to Huss, studies have largely focused on the melting ice masses. In the latest research however, the team from France and Switzerland focused on the ecology of newly emerging ice-free areas.

An understanding of these post-glacial ecosystems is important, the researcher said. In the future, they could provide a place of refuge for species which are being displaced elsewhere by warming.

Local biodiversity could thus increase, and as such, “these new ice-free areas must be protected”. Today, less than half of all glaciated areas enjoy such a status.

+ ‘The only way to save glaciers is to stop global warming’

Meanwhile, protecting the remaining glaciers is also important, despite inevitable shrinkage, Huss added.

The researchers’ modelling shows that the retreat will continue at a similar rate up to 2040, regardless of what happens to the climate. After that, however, estimates differ depending on which climate protection measures are taken. While the area could be halved by 2100 without any measures being taken (a previous study was even more bleak), the loss could be limited to 22% with strong protection measures, the study found.

Besides ETH Zurich, researchers from the University of Freiburg and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) were involved in the study.