“Even if the climate stabilizes, the ice caps will continue to melt,” warns a glaciologist

“On a scale of a hundred years, if the climate continues to warm, the Alps will be essentially glacier-free,” according to Gehard Krinner.

“Even if the climate stabilizes at 1.5 or 2 degrees, the ice caps will continue to melt”, alert Wednesday December 6 on franceinfo Gerhard Krinner, glaciologist and CNRS researcher at the Institute of Environmental Geosciences. The European agency Copernicus has noted that 2023 will be the hottest ever recorded on the planet, which will inevitably have consequences on glaciers and ice caps, according to the geologist, who recognizes that “the cast iron is strong and it continues”And “in that sense”there “a loss of mass” glaciers and the rise in sea level that goes with them “is irreversible”.

However, he emphasizes that these consequences will be long-term. “On a scale of a hundred years, if the climate continues to warm, the Alps will be essentially glacier-free.”explains the researcher. But concerning the Atlantic and Greenland, these are large ice sheets 2 thick 000 to 3 000 meters, they will not disappear within 100 years”, he assures. Antarctic ice “will disappear” in summer, “probably around the middle of the century, and it will return in winter”. He confirms that“a few decades from now, you will still recognize planet Earth”but for all that, “every tenth of a degree counts”.

“It’s not a cliff we fall off, it’s more of a minefield we walk into.”

Gerhard Krinner, glaciologist

franceinfo

For Gerhard Krinner, however, it is possible to “slow down the speed at which” the skullcaps “lose mass, and therefore the speed at which sea level also rises”. For this, it is necessary to limit “greenhouse gas emissions”. Also, the geologist takes a position on one of the subjects that drives the COP28 which is currently taking place in Dubai: the mention, or not, of the exit from fossil fuels in the final agreement. For a “researcher like me, a physicist, it is very clear, we must get out of fossil fuels immediately, as quickly as possible to limit greenhouse gas emissions which are the cause of global warming”insists Gerhard Krinner, “It’s urgent”.