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Projected deglaciation of western Canada in the twenty-first century

Nature Geoscience volume 8, pages 372–377 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Retreat of mountain glaciers is a significant contributor to sea-level rise and a potential threat to human populations through impacts on water availability and regional hydrology. Like most of Earth’s mountain glaciers, those in western North America are experiencing rapid mass loss1,2. Projections of future large-scale mass change are based on surface mass balance models that are open to criticism, because they ignore or greatly simplify glacier physics. Here we use a high-resolution regional glaciation model, developed by coupling physics-based ice dynamics with a surface mass balance model, to project the fate of glaciers in western Canada. We use twenty-first-century climate scenarios from an ensemble of global climate models in our simulations; the results indicate that by 2100, the volume of glacier ice in western Canada will shrink by 70 ± 10% relative to 2005. According to our simulations, few glaciers will remain in the Interior and Rockies regions, but maritime glaciers, in particular those in northwestern British Columbia, will survive in a diminished state. We project the maximum rate of ice volume loss, corresponding to peak input of deglacial meltwater to streams and rivers, to occur around 2020–2040. Potential implications include impacts on aquatic ecosystems, agriculture, forestry, alpine tourism and water quality.

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Figure 1: Study region and subregions in the Canadian Cordillera of western Canada.
Figure 2: Comparisons of observed and modelled ice hypsometry for reference year 2005.
Figure 3: Projected changes for glaciers in the western Canadian study region.
Figure 4: Projected changes for glaciers in the Columbia Reach drainage basin within the Columbia River Basin of British Columbia.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, BC Hydro, the Columbia Basin Trust and the Universities of British Columbia and Northern British Columbia. It has benefited greatly from contributions of data, knowledge and effort by E. Berthier, T. Bolch, M. N. Demuth, G. M. Flato, S. J. Marshall, E. Miles, R. D. Moore, C. Reuten, E. Schiefer, C. G. Schoof, T. Stickford and R. Wheate. We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modelling groups (listed in Supplementary Table 1) for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the US Department of Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada

    Garry K. C. Clarke & Valentina Radić

  2. Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Iceland, Reykjavík 101, Iceland

    Alexander H. Jarosch

  3. Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 3R4, Canada

    Faron S. Anslow

  4. Natural Resources and Environmental Studies Institute and Geography Program, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, British Columbia V2N 4Z9, Canada

    Brian Menounos

Authors
  1. Garry K. C. Clarke
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  2. Alexander H. Jarosch
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  3. Faron S. Anslow
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  4. Valentina Radić
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  5. Brian Menounos
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Contributions

G.K.C.C., A.H.J. and F.S.A. co-developed the ice flow code used in this study. A.H.J. provided downscaled precipitation fields for the mass balance sub-model as well as numerical insights for the development of the overall model chain. F.S.A. developed the mass balance modelling framework. V.R. performed downscaling of CRU and GCM data, contributed to the development of the bias-correction methods and helped to guide the final write-up. B.M. led the research network, provided essential data sets and guided the final write-up. G.K.C.C. performed the final calculations and wrote the initial versions of the manuscript and supplement.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Garry K. C. Clarke.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Clarke, G., Jarosch, A., Anslow, F. et al. Projected deglaciation of western Canada in the twenty-first century. Nature Geosci 8, 372–377 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2407

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