Loss of Mountain Water Resources and Sea-level Rise: Why even 1.5°C is Too High for 3.5 Billion

“The latest science over the last two to three years tells us the threshold beyond which ice loss from the Antarctic will become irreversible over centuries to millennia is much lower than we thought. [...] If we keep on as we are now, we could trigger runaway feedbacks within the next few decades, with sea level rise from ice sheets accelerating much, much faster than we feared.” “Knowing what we know today, 2°C should not even be on the table,” said negotiator Carlos Fuller from the Caribbean nation of Belize, who attended the “cryosphere” (snow and ice) workshop. [...] Johan Rockström, Joyeeta Gupta and their fellow authors conclude: “The world has already passed the safe and just climate boundary, which is set at 1°C above pre-industrial temperature levels, as tens of millions of people are already harmed by the current level of climate change.” The IPCC says up to 3.5 billion people live in regions highly vulnerable to even moderate sea- level rise from ice sh. [...] The scientists noted that real-time field observations of the Greenland ice sheet and mountain glacier loss are running above the upper range of the latest IPCC projections, known as AR6. [...] “Melting glaciers and erratic snowfall disrupting water supplies, widespread flooding juxtaposed with heat and drought, disruption of the monsoon – it’s the reality of 2 billion people in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region today.