Responding to publication of two reports, Overshoot and the Cryosphere: Averting Global Meltdown and State of the Cryosphere 2026: The Cost of Overshoot by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which find that overshooting the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target, which is now inevitable, will cause large-scale, and perhaps irreversible changes, to melting ice sheets, glaciers, permafrost, sea ice and polar oceans, Dr Sian Prior, Lead Advisor to the Clean Arctic Alliance said:

“These reports acknowledge that global impacts and risks from the loss of snow and ice systems – the cryosphere – increases with every fraction of a degree of warming and that humans and the environment face greater risks from the melting of the cryosphere. The Arctic and Antarctic polar ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica are melting about six times faster now than 30 years ago.”

“Meanwhile, with the shipping industry currently responsible for some 3% of global GHG emissions as well as increasing emissions of the short-lived climate forcing pollutants black carbon and methane – recognised by the Overshoot report as having a disproportionate impact in the Arctic, it is essential that the sector immediately intensify efforts to rapidly reduce its climate impact through cutting emissions – and this means cleaner fuels and decarbonisation.”

“After 15 years of discussion on reducing the impact of black carbon emissions on the Arctic, a proposal on polar fuels is currently slated for the International Maritime Organization’s Pollution Prevention and Response meeting in January 2027”, said Prior. “If adopted by IMO Member States, a polar fuels regulation will have a major impact on reducing climate-heating black carbon emissions in the Arctic. The proposal, from Denmark, Germany, France and the Solomon Islands, must now be backed by Arctic countries, in particular Canada, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.”

The two Cryosphere reports state that a chance remains to limit such impacts can still be limited by minimising overshoot – this means sharply reducing emissions, coupled with a scaled-up carbon drawdown (when carbon in the atmosphere declines) and calls for a more rapid transition from fossil fuel dependency in order to manage the impacts to, for example to, Arctic sea ice and glacier ice.

The reports recognise that limiting global losses and damages from the cryosphere requires limiting the magnitude of peak warming as much as possible, keeping the duration of overshoot as brief as possible and returning to well below 1.5^oC, and preferably to near or below 1.0^oC as quickly as possible. Importantly, returning to 1.5^oC following a brief overshoot is still feasible if efforts to reduce GHG emissions are intensified immediately and supported by deep reductions in short-lived climate forcers including black carbon to kick-start this pathway.

The reports:

• Overshoot and the Cryosphere: Averting Global Meltdown
• State of the Cryosphere 2026: The Cost of Overshoot