Between 1994 and 2017, the melting of the Earth’s glaciers accelerated by 65 percent. As the ice melts and sea level rises, Lithuania will eventually be divided into islands and become too cold for any crops to grow, says Andrejus Spiridonovas, a geoscientist at Vilnius University.
Using satellite data, scientists at the University of Leeds have estimated that around 28 trillion tonnes of Earth’s ice have already melted between 1994 and 2017. This is equivalent to a 100-metre-thick ice sheet covering the whole UK.
The study has also found that the rate of ice loss has increased dramatically over the past three decades, from 0.8 trillion tonnes per year in the 1990s to 1.3 trillion tonnes per year in 2017, mainly due to the sharp increase in the loss of ice in Antarctica and Greenland.
The famous science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow depicts a dystopian future scenario: some of the world’s glaciers melt and New York is catastrophically flooded. Is this really just fiction? How much ice would have to melt for New York to be flooded?
As regards the speed of all these processes, it is not entirely true, but the film is inspired by real facts. The events shown there are possible maybe 150-200 years from now when those smaller glaciers of Greenland, West Antarctica melt.
However, if we continue to burn fossil fuels for another 100 years, then in about 1,000 years, maybe a little more, all the glaciers will melt, including East Antarctica, where the ice is particularly thick.
That would then raise sea levels by several dozen metres. Not only New York but whole countries would be drowned. Lithuania would be divided into several islands.
It is difficult to say how much the sea level will actually rise because there could be spikes when the system reaches tipping points and starts to stimulate itself to move to another state. Then things could accelerate. If that acceleration were not there, by the end of the century, [the sea level] could rise by between 0.5 and 2 metres, depending on how much CO2 we emit.
Which regions would be flooded if the global sea level rose by 2 metres?
London, which is practically a port city on the river Thames. Then the Netherlands, Denmark, and all the countries that have a flat coastline.
What would Lithuania look like if the sea level rose by 2 metres?
Klaipėda would no longer exist. Virtually all the coastlines would disappear. Perhaps, [the water] won’t reach the centre of Lithuania, but who knows?
But, for example, if the temperature increases by 2 degrees and in 100 years [the sea level] rises by 2 metres, it doesn’t mean that it won’t continue rising after that. In a few hundred years, it may well be that it will reach the centre of Lithuania.
If that were to happen, there would be a huge environmental transformation. The last time we saw such a thing was during the transition from the interglacial to the current ice age. We would not recognise the landscape, there would be stronger winds, interchangeable droughts and floods, erosion.
Do scientists predict the threshold of the sea level at which humans could still survive: maintain infrastructure, have enough resources?
Theoretically, all the glaciers could melt, and humanity wouldn’t disappear if somehow it was decided that one part would perish and the other part would survive. Otherwise, it will be a case of everyone crowding in and increasing conflict.
But most of the infrastructure is on the coasts, and we are very dependent on it because most of the freight is transported by water. So, if we lose something that we have built for centuries and have to rebuild it, that is a very heavy economic burden.
So, after a while, it would not be worthwhile to maintain anything, and we would have to go into the forests.
I have read the work of the theoretical historian Peter Turchin, and he writes that perhaps the collapse of civilisation is not necessarily a bad thing and is simply a transition of humanity to a different state – less organised, more autonomous, where you rely on your own personal resources rather than on the global network.
It would be a fragmentation of humanity, and the saying “everyone for themselves” would really take on meaning, with thousands of wars going on at the same time in different parts of the world.
You mentioned that Europe is low-lying, so which part of it could potentially disappear when the glaciers melt?
It would not disappear completely, but the physical geography would change dramatically. Where there are major rivers now, there would be sea gulfs. In Ukraine, where the Dnieper flows, there would be a huge gulf. Practically the whole of southern Ukraine, southern Russia would be flooded. Crimea and the Caucasus would be islands.
What will the climate be like? After all, glaciers reflect a lot of sunlight, and if they were to melt, it would probably change the way the ocean currents work.
What could happen is that, when Greenland melts, fresh water will cover the entire North Atlantic in a thin layer. The cold fresh water layer will then prevent the deeper layers from giving up their heat, and it will be trapped in the ocean for some time (200-300 years). This would disrupt the entire circulation of the world’s water, causing heat to build up in the South, making it hotter there and making our region colder than before.
For example, it’s getting warmer in Lithuania, making the climate like in the Czech Republic or Germany, and then suddenly it’s going to be like Lapland or Alaska. It will be so cold that no crops will grow.
Should we be worried about the fact that, when the glaciers melt, certain bacteria may escape from them and from the permafrost?
It is likely that there will be jumps of bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and fungi. Initially, into wildlife, including mammals and birds that live in glacial regions. And then, through some intermediaries, or directly to humans.
This is a huge risk because the organisms that were frozen in the permafrost have been accumulated for hundreds of thousands of years. So, the experience of this whole period will be rapidly given away in a few hundred years – all the diversity that has evolved there will be given away in a very short time.
We understand that the melting of the glaciers today is largely of our own making. How much time do we have to stabilise the process at least to some extent? Or is that no longer possible?
The sooner we stabilise, the better. We need to use as little fossil fuels as possible. It’d be better to switch to uranium, which people are scared of, but in reality, its effects are much smaller than those of burning coal.
How much do we have left? It is estimated that we are some 10 years away from the first tipping points that will trigger catastrophic transitions – by 2033, we will have crossed that tipping point, and then the unstoppable processes will begin. It will melt, and melt, and melt, and it will be hotter, and hotter, and hotter.
Ten years is the point of no return, but what will be the speed of the events that will follow?
We are entering a world that no one has ever seen before.
All we can say is that the sea level is not going to rise that fast – it will probably rise by a centimetre or so a year. But at the same time, there will be all sorts of other changes, such as stronger and more frequent heat waves.
In India and Pakistan, there have been two millennium floods in 10 years. Why are they called that? Because, according to all statistics, they should occur once every thousand years. Since they were successive and of similar magnitude, it can be said that the intensity of such events has increased a hundredfold. We can expect them to become even more frequent – there will be a flood every year, not every decade.
What do we need to do to stay within the threshold you mentioned by 2033?
In principle, we need to move away from the internal combustion engine: we need to generate our energy from sources other than fossil fuels, and we need to drastically reduce CO2 emissions.
And regarding glaciers, there is not much we can do. We just need to convert our economy as quickly as possible so that there is as little intervention in nature as possible.
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