Children born today stand to witness the near-total loss of glaciers from British Columbia, a study published April 6 in Nature Geoscience concludes.

The paper is significant in that it suggests previous predictions of glacial decline in B.C. and Alberta have underestimated the future pace of melting.

It states that by 2100, Western Canada will have lost 70 percent of coastal glaciers and more than 90 percent of ice currently held in the Rocky Mountains.

The paper’s lead author is Garry Clarke, a professor emeritus in UBC’s department of earth, ocean, and atmospheric sciences.

“Most of our ice holdouts at the end of the century will be in the northwest corner of the province,” he said in a media release. “Soon our mountains could look like those in Colorado or California and you don’t see much ice in those landscapes.”

The study notes that there are more than 17,000 glaciers in B.C. and Alberta, which account for nearly one-tenth of the planet’s total frozen ice sheets.

It states that human activity is the primary factor driving the glaciers’ disappearance.

“Increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, released from fossil fuel combustion, is the primary factor that will cause increases in surface air temperatures in the decades ahead,” reads the UBC media release. “Researchers say the impact of climate change on glacier health may not be evident at first sight. While the surface area covered by the glacier may not be changing, the glaciers are thinning at a rate of about one metre per year.”

Clarke noted there that climate change is expected to bring more rain to the Pacific Northwest, which will could offset some of the consequences of dwindling glaciers. But he warned additional rain water cannot compensate for potential damage to ecosystems that will likely be felt by the loss of the glaciers.

“These glaciers act as a thermostat for freshwater ecosystems,” Clarke said. “Once the glaciers are gone, the streams will be a lot warmer and this will hugely change fresh water habitat. We could see some unpleasant surprises in terms of salmon productivity.”

According to the release, researchers’ prediction of faster glacial melt was based on a range of greenhouse gas emission scenarios modelled by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The UBC study was conducted in partnership with the University of Iceland and the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium.