The Vanishing Ice and What It Means for Us All 

Glaciers are retreating, snow is vanishing, and permafrost is thawing. The cryosphere’s decline impacts everyone, everywhere. 

Pascal Egli is a geographer and glaciologist based in Norway, with field experience across the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, and Arctic regions. He currently contributes to CryoSCOPE, an EU-funded project exploring the interactions between the cryosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere using advanced modeling, earth observation, and AI. In this conversation, he walks us through what the cryosphere really is, why its disappearance matters far beyond mountain regions, and how new research hopes to sharpen our understanding of rapidly evolving risks. 

The cryosphere refers to all forms of frozen water on Earth, glaciers, snow, permafrost, and sea ice. It’s far more widespread than most people imagine. We have the major ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, glaciated mountain ranges like the Alps and Himalayas, and vast regions with seasonal snow across North America, Russia, and northern Europe. All of this frozen water acts as a temporary storage for the freshwater we use. About 1.5 billion people depend on glacier melt for seasonal water supply, not just for drinking, but also for hydropower, agriculture, and industry. As climate change accelerates, these frozen reservoirs are shrinking fast, with serious consequences.

As climate change accelerates, these frozen reservoirs are shrinking fast, with serious consequences.

I see it almost every day. I live in central Norway, and winters have become noticeably rainier. Snow conditions for training, I do ski mountaineering and ice climbing, are getting worse. Sometimes, the snowpack melts mid-winter or becomes dangerously wet. Glaciers are also becoming more dangerous: more rockfalls, thinner snow cover, and more open crevasses. On ski tours in spring, we often have to carry our skis much higher because lower slopes are bare. Beyond my own experience, these changes affect communities that rely on stable snow and ice, including athletes, mountaineers, and rural economies.

Yes, both snow and ice have high albedo, that means they reflect 80–90% of incoming solar radiation back into space. Once they melt, darker surfaces like rock or soil absorb much more heat, which accelerates warming. This is especially relevant in spring when snowmelt reduces reflectivity and creates a feedback loop. The loss of albedo in the cryosphere is a direct driver of additional warming, both globally and regionally. 

The loss of albedo in the cryosphere is a direct driver of additional warming, both globally and regionally.

Permafrost, permanently frozen ground, stores massive amounts of methane, especially in the Arctic. When it thaws, that methane is released into the atmosphere. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO₂, even if it doesn’t last as long. This is one of the most dangerous feedback loops. And just recently, we had a dramatic example: in the Swiss Alps, a large glacier collapsed and buried a village. It’s believed the collapse was triggered by the thawing of permafrost in a rock slope, which had previously acted as a kind of glue holding the structure together. These are no longer rare events.

In the Alps, increased rockfalls are making traditional mountaineering routes unstable and dangerous. Entire climbing routes have disappeared. Infrastructure at high altitudes, huts, cables, roads, is also more at risk. For communities, there’s increased threat from glacier lake outburst floods, unstable slopes, or changing water availability. These aren’t isolated problems, they’re altering how people interact with mountain environments, how tourism works, and how safe these regions are.

For communities, there’s increased threat from glacier lake outburst floods, unstable slopes, or changing water availability.

CryoSCOPE is a Horizon Europe project with 19 partner institutions across Europe and India. It focuses on understanding how the cryosphere interacts with water systems and the atmosphere. The goal is to improve predictions and risk assessments, particularly for applications like hydropower, winter road planning, and natural hazard monitoring. Some teams are working on permafrost and methane, others on glacier lake outburst floods, like I do, and others on snow hydrology and sublimation. It’s a multi-dimensional project combining academic research with real-world applications.

These areas represent different types of cryospheric environments and also reflect where research is already underway. Svalbard, for example, is a good Arctic proxy and relatively accessible. The Alps are densely populated and highly vulnerable. And the Himalayas affect nearly a billion people downstream. So, the regions were chosen both for scientific value and real-world relevance.

The Alps are densely populated and highly vulnerable. And the Himalayas affect nearly a billion people downstream. 

They’ve come a long way, but challenges remain. One issue is the limited number of monitored glaciers, globally, we have very little long-term data. That creates uncertainty. We can model general glacier retreat quite well, but more complex processes like glacier lake outburst floods or rock-ice interactions are harder to predict. There’s also uncertainty in climate projections themselves and how they translate into local impacts.

It depends on the region and focus. Some teams use satellite data and machine learning to estimate seasonal drought or snow depth. Others use physically based glacier models to simulate how glaciers evolve under future climate scenarios. We also create AI emulators, models that mimic physical simulations but run faster. These help us simulate large-scale scenarios efficiently. For glacier hazards, for instance, we model future glacier geometry and then simulate how a lake outburst flood might behave. Later, we develop machine learning versions of that process to make it faster and scalable.

Success means completing all our deliverables on time, data sets, reports, scientific publications, and communications like this one. Beyond that, success is also about creating useful tools and insights for other scientists, policymakers, or practitioners. And of course, keeping our field teams safe during expeditions is part of that too. 

Success is also about creating useful tools and insights for other scientists, policymakers, or practitioners.

The cryosphere affects everyone. Sea level rise from melting ice sheets is a global issue, threatening coastal communities worldwide. Permafrost thaw releases methane, accelerating global warming. Loss of reflectivity makes climate feedback loops worse. And warmer climates mean more violent storms, extreme rainfall, and deadly heatwaves. I’ve seen 50°C temperatures in Pakistan, when the power goes out, survival becomes almost impossible. These extremes are deeply connected to cryosphere decline, even if the ice is melting thousands of kilometres away.