How Western Canada glaciers will melt away (CBC)

B.C., Alberta glaciers will shrink 70% by 2100

By Emily Chung, CBC News
Posted: Apr 06, 2015 11:55 AM ET Last Updated: Apr 07, 2015 7:52 AM ET

Wonder what your favourite glacier to ski or hike will look like in 20 or 40 years? A new study makes detailed predictions about how the glaciers in B.C. and Alberta will melt and shrink between now and 2100.

Glaciers are melting rapidly around the world, including in Canada, and human-caused climate change is now considered to be the main driver.

Glacier melt worldwide now caused mainly by humans
Unprecedented B.C. glacier melt seeps into U.S. climate change concerns

Thousands of glaciers in B.C. and Alberta are expected to lose 60 to 80 per cent of their combined volume compared to 2005, depending on how much CO2 gets added to the atmosphere between now and the end of the century.

Many of the glaciers in the Rockies will disappear altogether, predicts the new study published Monday in Nature Geoscience. In the Interior and Rockies regions, "ice area and volume losses will exceed 90 per cent," except in the most optimistic climate change scenario considered, it says. Glaciers in coastal northwestern British Columbia are expected to "survive in a diminished state."

Summary of the paper in Nature Geoscience​ (not currently available)



***
more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/how-western-canada-glaciers-will-melt-away-1.3022242
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2407.html