Mumbai, Chennai, and Visakhapatnam to sink? Major threat emerges for India and several other countries to submerge, study reveals…

If the average temperature rises by 2°C, all the glaciers in Scandinavian countries—Norway, Sweden, and Denmark—will completely melt.

Written by: Victor Dasgupta Edited by: Victor Dasgupta

Published: June 4, 2025, 11:36 AM IST

Share

Share Article

• Facebook
• WhatsApp
• X
• Email
• Telegram
• Linkedin

https://www.india.com/news/world/glaciers-mumbai-chennai-and-visakhapatnam-to-sink-major-threat-emerges-for-india-and-several-other-countries-to-submerge-7861026/ Copy

New Delhi: In a concerning report that suggests that the Earth’s average temperature could rise by 2.7°C by the end of this century due to our current lifestyle. The rise in the temperature indicates that by the end of this century, only a quarter of the Earth’s glaciers will remain, while the remaining three-quarters will have melted. In India, large parts of coastal cities like Mumbai, Chennai, and Visakhapatnam will be underwater by about two feet. A recent study published in the prestigious journal Science has issued this warning.

The recent images of Switzerland, where a glacier broke off from high mountains and caused destruction in the lower areas. When this icy storm began to descend in the form of a new disaster, the people living in the valley below, in a village named Blatten, didn’t even have enough time to react. Within moments, several houses and buildings in the lower region were buried under a muddy, icy, wet sludge. Ninety percent of the village was devastated by this glacier, called the Bärrch glacier. In view of this, around 300 people and their livestock had already been evacuated from the village.

According to research published in the prestigious journal Science, the world’s glaciers are melting much faster than previously estimated. By the end of this century, if the Earth’s average temperature rises by another 2.7°C, only 24% of the ice in the world’s glaciers will remain. That means 76% of the glaciers’ ice will have melted.

Under the Paris Agreement, it was decided that global temperature rise should be limited to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. According to the research published in Science, even if the global average temperature increases by just 1.5°C, 46% of glacier ice will still melt, and only 54% will remain.

The research states that even if the average temperature stops rising and remains at today’s levels, glacier ice will still decrease by 39% from 2020 levels. This clearly indicates that the current average temperature itself poses a serious threat to the existence of glaciers.

Here are some of the important details:

• If the average temperature rises by 2°C, all the glaciers in Scandinavian countries—Norway, Sweden, and Denmark—will completely melt.
• About 90 percent of the glaciers in North America’s Rocky Mountains, Europe’s Alps, and Iceland will disappear.
• A 2°C increase in average temperature will also have a severe impact on the Hindu Kush Himalayas in South Asia.
• Compared to 2020, only 25% of the glacier ice in the Hindu Kush Himalayas will remain, meaning 75% will melt.
• The rivers that originate from the Hindu Kush Himalayas—flowing through the Ganga, Indus, and Brahmaputra basins—are a critical source of food and water for nearly two billion people.
• Even if the temperature rise is limited to 1.5°C, only 40 to 45% of the glacier ice in the Hindu Kush Himalayas will survive, and 55 to 60% will melt.

This study also makes it clear that even if the rise in temperature stops, the melting of glaciers will continue for centuries. In this study, 21 scientists from ten countries used eight glacier models to try to understand the future of more than 200,000 glaciers around the world. There are approximately 275,000 glaciers globally.