Most of Western Canada's glaciers to melt by end of century: report

Western Canada has more glacial ice cover than the Himalayas and almost as much asSouth America. For now.

Those ice reserves help to regulate the temperature of British Columbia and Alberta and, in B.C., feed the hydroelectric dams that generate most of the region’s power.

But a new study predicts 70 per cent of that ice cover will disappear by the end of this century, affecting everything from fish to farmers.

“Potential implications include impacts on aquatic ecosystems, agriculture, forestry, alpine tourism and water quality,” says the joint study by the universities of British Columbia, Victoria and Iceland, and the University of Northern British Columbia.

There are 200,000 glaciers on Earth and 17,000 of them are in British Columbia. Alberta has 800. An estimated 26,700 square kilometres of B.C. and Alberta are covered in glacial ice.

Based on projections of climate change from the most recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the team of researchers predicts the melt will peak from 2020 to 2040.

Global climate change spurred by greenhouse gas emissions is the primary cause, says Brian Menounos, of the Natural Resources and Environmental Studies Institute at UNBC and a co-author of the study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

“There is little doubt that humans are fundamentally altering the climate system due in large part to GHG produced from fossil fuel consumption,” he tells Yahoo Canada in an email exchange from Patagonia, where he is continuing his research.

The team ran several scenarios, with differing GHG emissions levels.

“Since the glaciers are already strongly out of balance with today’s climate they would continue to melt some even if GHG emissions could magically be shut off tomorrow.”

While ice cover area may not be changing, the glaciers are thinning at a rate of about one metre per year. Most glaciers are only 100 to 200 metres thick.

Ice cover loss in the Rockies varies between 70 and 90 per cent, depending on global emission levels.

“A serious attempt at mitigating the effects of human-induced climate change with require a coordinated effort. Developed countries like Canada need to do their part on mitigating their own production of GHG,” he says.

The melt will be more drastic in the drier Rocky Mountains straddling B.C. and Alberta, says the study.

“According to our simulations, few glaciers will remain in the Interior and Rockies regions,” says the study.

“Glaciers of the Coast region are most resistant to climate change.”

The wetter mountains in northwestern B.C. could lose about half of their glacier volume. The St. Elias, Northern Coast and Southern Coast ranges have the highest ice content today and will be the most resistant to deglaciation.

The rest, however, “will experience total or near-total losses of ice area and volume,” the study says.

“Soon our mountains could look like those in Colorado or California and you don’t see much ice in those landscapes,” Garry Clarke, of the UBC Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, says in a statement from the university.

The effect are far-reaching.

The U.S. National Climate Assessment last year singled out the melting glaciers of western Canada as a concern, with implications for hydropower production, ocean circulation patterns, fisheries and sea-level rise.

Glaciers help to regulate the temperature and replenish the freshwater supply essential for drinking water and industries like mining and agriculture.

As they melt, they will contribute to sea level rise.

Increased precipitation that comes with climate change could mitigate the effects, but the greatest impact will be on freshwater ecosystems.

“Once the glaciers are gone, the streams will be a lot warmer and this will hugely change fresh water habitat,” Clarke says. “We could see some unpleasant surprises in terms of salmon productivity."