ANKARA 

Mountain glaciers are disappearing from the face of the planet due to climate change, say scientists based on the latest data, warning that this loss puts the water supplies of millions of people at risk and threatens more and more land- and weather-based disasters.

The United Nations has declared 2025 the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation, with this year’s International Mountain Day on Dec. 11 highlighting the theme: “Glaciers matter for water, food and livelihoods in mountains and beyond.”

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. The World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) 2024 report confirmed that 2023 marked the fastest recorded year of glacier loss in history.

Under current IPCC scenarios, the outlook for mountain glaciers is catastrophic. Even if warming is limited to 1.5C, half of them will disappear by the end of the century. At 2C of warming, 60%–70% will be lost, and at 3C, nearly all mountain glaciers on Earth will vanish.

Speaking to Anadolu, Istanbul Technical University Professor Orhan Ince, the scientific director of the TerrArctic Mega Grant Project and head of the university’s Microbial Ecology Group, warned that high-mountain ecosystems are undergoing a rapid and irreversible transformation due to global warming, shifting precipitation patterns and intensifying extreme weather.

“The consequences are staggering,” Ince said. “In the Himalayas alone, 1.9 billion people’s water supply is at risk. South America faces 12%–22% higher water stress in agricultural regions. Global hydropower production could drop 8%–12% by 2050. In Türkiye, seasonal river flows critical for drinking water and irrigation may decline 20%–25% by mid-century. These losses are irreversible, but they can still be slowed.”

He added that glaciers are no longer merely shrinking in some mountain systems, they are approaching total extinction.

“The European Alps have already lost 65% of their glacier volume since 1970, Alaska–Yukon more than 30%, and parts of the Himalayas over 40%,” he noted.

Rapid glacier melt also sharply increases geological hazards such as landslides, flash floods and glacial lake outburst floods while disrupting ecosystems and destabilizing global atmospheric circulation.

In Türkiye, the situation is equally alarming. Glaciers on Mount Agri (Ararat), the Cilo-Sat range, Kackar Mountains and Mount Erciyes have shrunk dramatically over the past 40 years, with ice loss reaching 40%–60% in some areas.

“Glaciers on Mount Agri have shrunk by more than half since the 1980s. In the Kackar range, glaciers are retreating 10–20 meters (33-66 feet) per year on average,” Ince said.

“This will directly affect water regimes in the Eastern Black Sea region, agricultural irrigation, hydropower generation and make ecosystems more vulnerable, increase landslide risks and disrupt groundwater recharge and stream flows.”

Ince explained that Arctic warming — occurring three to four times faster than the global average — is altering precipitation and temperature patterns across mountain belts from the South Caucasus to the Himalayas.

As scientific director of the TerrArctic Mega Grant Project, a Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education-funded initiative led by Tyumen State University, Ince oversees groundbreaking field measurements in the harsh expanses of Siberian taiga forests, fragile tundra transition zones and thawing permafrost regions.

He warned that glacier-fed water loss could force at least 30 million people to abandon their homes between 2030 and 2050.

To slow the collapse, Ince called for immediate action: high-resolution monitoring using Lidar, GNSS, Sentinel satellites and high-altitude drones; national early-warning hydrological models for flash floods and glacial lake outbursts; and most critically, drastic global cuts in CO2 and black carbon emissions.

“Without those measures,” he concluded, “today’s extreme glacier loss will become a permanent feature of daily life after 2050.”