Name: How long will Canada’s glaciers last?
Uploaded: 2026-01-01T16:50:26.424Z
Duration: 3 min 57 s
Description: Climate change is having a huge impact on Canada’s Rocky Mountain glaciers, and scientists say we have already passed the tipping point. Meteorologist Christy Climenhaga travelled to the Athabasca Glacier, the focal point of the Icefields Parkway, to learn more about the rapid glacial recession.

Climate change is having a huge impact on Canada’s Rocky Mountain glaciers, and scientists say we have already passed the tipping point. Meteorologist Christy Climenhaga travelled to the Athabasca Glacier, the focal point of the Icefields Parkway, to learn more about the rapid glacial recession.

Athabasca Glacier

Canada's glaciers, particularly those in the Rocky Mountains, are retreating rapidly due to climate change. Scientific studies estimate that between 60 and 80 percent of ice volume in Western Canada could be lost by the year 2100, with some glaciers potentially vanishing as early as 2030.

This decline has significant implications for river systems and aquatic life, as glaciers provide crucial water during dry periods. Even if global warming were halted immediately, experts say most of the region's glaciers would still disappear, fundamentally altering the landscape and water availability.

How long will Canada’s glaciers last?

Canada's glaciers have long been a symbol of our rocky mountain wilderness, but they're disappearing, fast. Our glaciers are receding at an alarming rate, not only across Canada, but around the world. In the last 15 years or so, spending more time on the Athabasca Glacier specifically, it's been remarkable to watch the dramatic change of this landscape. It's no longer possible to ignore. But before we go too far into the future, we have to go back to the beginning. Glaciers form in mountainous hollows where snow piles up over many years. With time, that snow compresses, forming ice, but it doesn't become a glacier until it very slowly starts to flow downhill. The water from our glaciers and the rocky mountains helps to feed our rivers that flow across the prairies. Rivers like the North Saskatchewan, the Athabasca, or the Bow River. A glacier's life cycle depends on snowfall accumulating and melting away throughout the year. But when more melts than can be replaced, the glacier will begin to shrink. And we're seeing that shrinking already. A trip to the toe of the Athabasca Glacier in the 1920s would have ended near the present-day highway. But now, it's well over a kilometre back. Glaciers in Western Canada are being hit pretty hard by changes in the climate. So some studies done recently show that, for example, in Western Canada, B.C. and Alberta, somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of ice volume will be lost by 2100. And nowhere is that loss more obvious than here, the Outwash Plain. Fifteen years ago, where we're sitting now, was a glacier. So even accessing the toe of the glacier now is a completely different game. And it's no longer changing over, like, five or six or seven years. It's quite literally, in the summer, changing over five or six or seven days. And that change is perhaps the most evident when it comes to our waterways. Glaciers contribute the most water to our landscape when it comes to water quality. Glaciers contribute the most water to our landscape when everything else is drying up. Think late August, when there's no snowmelt and little rain. The higher water levels are really important for fish species. So fish that spawn in the fall really need those higher water levels in the fall. And without glaciers, the water levels would be much lower. And that would be really problematic for a lot of fish species. During particularly hot summers, you could even see glacially fed rivers go up in volume as melt increases. We're entering the time where the glaciers are still voluminous enough to contribute a lot of water. But they haven't retreated far enough back that that contribution is reducing. And so we might have a 20-year window of this much water, after which it's going to start to fall off a cliff. And when the glaciers are gone, so too is that water. We can look a little bit south and see what happens in Montana and Idaho already. Because they've essentially lost their glaciers. And things get very, very dry when they get into a drought period. Scientists say we're past the tipping point for many of Canada's Rocky Mountain glaciers. The calculations that many scientists have done suggest that even if somehow magically we're able to stop global warming tomorrow and return the atmosphere to more normal CO2 concentrations, we would lose most of the Rockies glaciers. And while the Columbia Ice Field may survive until 2100, glaciers like the Paito Glacier near Banff could be gone by 2030. And the ice field's parkway, named for its glacier vistas, could become a relic within a couple of decades.

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