Why ICCI

Our global cryosphere — ice, snow, and permafrost regions, as well as both polar oceans — is being lost due to global warming. But what happens in the cryosphere does not stay in the cryosphere, and reaches communities and ecosystems around the planet:

• through sea-level rise and ocean current disturbance from ice sheet and glacier loss;
• through availability of water resources from snow and glacier loss;
• through carbon emissions and infrastructure damage from permafrost thaw;
• through added polar warming when sea ice decreases;
• through acidification and warming of polar and near-polar oceans.

The cryosphere is changing faster and more irreversibly than the rest of the planet, simply due to the melting point of ice. In particular, we are learning that the fate of the cryosphere — which in many ways, determines the state of the planet on which all of us live — is especially sensitive to the temperature range in which we find ourselves today: between 1°C and 2°C above pre-industrial, or CO2 concentrations between about 350ppm and 500ppm.

The physical response of the cryosphere means that even today’s temperature of around 1.2 degrees is in the danger range, and overshoot of the 1.5°C Paris Agreement limit should be unacceptable. Every tenth of a degree matters, as does every degree of overshoot.

ICCI therefore seeks to:

• Highlight the plight of the cryosphere, the rapid changes taking place there and their global consequences, for example through the annual State of the Cryosphere Reports.
• Inform climate negotiators and the global community of the important differences in the climate dynamics driving cryosphere climate change at various events, including UNFCCC meetings and with Cryosphere Pavilions there.
• Bring together networks of scientists, policymakers and other stakeholders to develop policies of sufficient climate ambition to prevent increasing loss and damage globally from cryosphere loss.
• Help obtain funding for integrated projects across disciplines, bringing together a range of organizations and individuals (for example Arctic, Himalayan, and Antarctic black carbon experts) for local and regional cryosphere action.

A focus on CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions is the basis for any long-term efforts to preserve as much of the cryosphere as possible. ICCI has served as a strong advocate for these efforts since its founding in the immediate wake of COP15 (2009) in Copenhagen through highlighting the implications of fossil fuel emissions for cryosphere loss and climate-driven changes around the globe. Where other solutions such as regional black carbon reductions are supported by the science, ICCI also works to bring these to light, including through various demonstration projects.

The ICCI timeframe originally focused on a five-year timeline of work, from 2010-2015 and towards the 2015 Paris Agreement. While Paris represented a major step forward, the climate commitments (or “NDCs,” Nationally Determined Contributions) adopted there were however totally inadequate to the task of cryosphere preservation on which the Earth’s climate system rests, as outlined in ICCI’s 2015 “Thresholds” report. 

ICCI therefore renewed its mandate after Paris and now aims at 2030, the date at which IPCC scientists note we must cut fossil fuel and other greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% globally to have any chance at remaining close to 1.5°C, and prevent essentially irreversible loss and damage that will expand rapidly above that temperature, which is apparent already today. Indeed, the latest cryosphere science indicates that even 1.5°C is too high for much of the global cryosphere. Were the Paris Agreement concluded today, science would motivate an absolute 1.5°C limit rather than 2°C, with efforts to return below 1°C as soon as possible.

In response to the science, ICCI is working to make the “1.5°C cryosphere guardrail,” and the emergency-scale need for countries to move towards 1.5°C pathways, clear to global leaders and the general public alike. These are physical climate science realities; they cannot be ignored or merely wished away.

Today, ICCI is registered as a non-profit in both Sweden and the United States, with programs related to the Arctic, Antarctica, Himalayas, Andes and other mountain regions, as well as the polar oceans.