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<\/p>\nGlobal ice is melting fast, with major sea level rise and extreme heat locked in unless emissions fall sharply. The window to act is closing.<\/p>\n
Having just achieved the hottest three years in recorded history, humans are well on the way to returning the planet to the ice-free state it experienced when dinosaurs last ruled.<\/p>\n
The result will be flooding on a Biblical scale, the progressive loss of most of the world\u2019s great cities and coastlines, storms of appalling ferocity, vast dumps of rain and almost continual heatwaves in the most populated regions. Great rivers will empty, deserts will sprawl, wildfires, famine and drought will prevail. Extinctions will multiply and sea life suffer a major die off.<\/p>\n
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These are the conditions that science now agrees will accompany the loss of the Earth\u2019s ice, that humans have now set in train.<\/p>\n
\u201cGlobal ice losses will likely continue with ongoing climate warming, culminating in an almost ice-free planet analogous to that which persisted throughout much of the Cretaceous, \u201c <\/p>\n
an international team of scientists<\/a> working for the Tibetan Laboratory of the China Academy of Sciences has warned.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven ongoing and anticipated global warming, reductions in Arctic and Antarctic ice are expected to continue, potentially leading to completely ice-free polar regions. Despite uncertainties in these predictions, we transition from a world with perennial glacier ice to one with only seasonal ice or shifting from a predominantly white winter planet to a blue one,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n Indeed, the first \u2018blue water event\u2019 \u2013 an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer \u2013 is predicted to occur <\/p>\n as early as 2027<\/a>, and almost certainly <\/p>\n before 2030<\/a>. Not only will the northern ice cap disperse, albeit briefly, but the <\/p>\n loss of the reflective surface of the ice<\/a> (albedo) and appearance of more dark ocean will significantly accelerate the Earth\u2019s uptake of heat from the sun, pushing global heating into overdrive.<\/p>\n The last time the Earth was ice free was around <\/p>\n 60 million years ago<\/a>, shortly after the dinosaurs made their exit. At that time, scientists have found, a few embryonic glaciers appeared in the high mountains of the Antarctic. The rest of the planet was ice-free.<\/p>\n The <\/p>\n 2025 State of the Cryosphere Report<\/a> warns of \u201cdisaster for billions\u201d resulting from human failure to control global heating, and the resulting universal loss of ice. \u201cThe European Alps, Scandinavia, North American Rockies and Iceland would lose at least half their ice at or below sustained global temperatures of +1\u00b0C, and nearly all ice at +2\u00b0C,\u201d it states.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no negotiating with the melting point of ice,\u201d it points out. Keeping sea level rise within manageable limits requires returning global warming to +1 degree, the report said. As things stand, temperatures are already at +1.5 degrees, and rising, portending several metres of sea level rise before the end of the century.<\/p>\n Bother polar ice caps are melting <\/p>\n much faster than previously anticipated<\/a>. The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, and the loss of its sea ice is accelerating the process. In the Antarctic, mighty <\/p>\n glaciers such as the Thwaites<\/a>, are proving more fragile and prone to collapse than their sheer mass suggests: this one ice river along could discharge 50 billion tonnes of meltwater into the ocean, raising sea levels by 1.5-2 metres.<\/p>\n Meanwhile global warming in equatorial regions is driving vast undersea currents, like heated hose pipes, to dissolve the polar ice sheets. In the north the <\/p>\n Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS)<\/a> has lost over 5000 square kilometres of ice weighing a billion tonnes, since the mid-1980s. Every one of its glaciers has either thinned or retreated.<\/p>\n Using the Prudhoe Dome, in northern Greenland, as a thermostat, glaciologists have calculated that the last time it was ice-free was in the warm spell immediately following the end of the last ice age, about 7000 years ago. At that time local temperatures were up by +3-5 degrees \u2013 a level likely to be reached by 2100. This points to the north of Greenland being ice-free again by the end of the century, pushing sea levels up by seven-to-eight metres on its own.<\/p>\n Worldwide, glaciers are providing science with an accurate, undeniable, measure of the extent and speed of global warming.<\/p>\n The latest global assessment<\/a> finds they have been losing around 275 billion tonnes of ice every year since 2000. The rate of ice loss has increased by around 36 billion tonnes a year between the first and second decades of the current century.<\/p>\n Thousands of glaciers have already vanished. Around 750 more disappear each year. Local communities have held <\/p>\n funeral ceremonies for their dying ice sheets<\/a>.<\/p>\n Those who wish to observe the destruction can do so on the <\/p>\n Global Glacier Casualty List<\/a>. The 11 regions with the <\/p>\n