Glaciers Are Changing Earth Faster Than You Think

Glaciers, nature’s slow-moving sculptors, are reshaping our planet in ways we can now measure with unprecedented precision.

Using machine learning to study 85% of the world’s modern glaciers, an international research team found that most glaciers grind the Earth at rates between 0.02 and 2.68 millimeters a year — about the thickness of a credit card.

Measuring the Speed of Change

Glaciers have sculpted much of Canada’s iconic landscape, from carving the deep valleys of Banff to grinding down Ontario’s terrain and leaving behind the rich soils of the Prairies. They continue to reshape the planet’s surface, but just how quickly does this transformation happen?

In a study published August 7 in Nature Geoscience, University of Victoria (UVic) geographer Sophie Norris and an international team of researchers present the most detailed assessment yet of the pace at which glaciers wear down the land. Their work also offers the first global estimates of how quickly more than 180,000 glaciers may erode in the years ahead.

Using a worldwide analysis powered by machine learning, the team predicted erosion rates for 85 percent of modern glaciers. The results suggest that 99 percent of them erode at rates between 0.02 and 2.68 millimeters each year (about the thickness of a credit card).

Complex Forces at Work

“The conditions that lead to erosion at the base of glaciers are more complicated than we previously understood,” says Norris. “Our analysis found that many variables strongly influence erosion rates: temperature, amount of water under the glacier, what kind of rocks are in the area, and how much heat comes from inside the Earth.”

“Given the extreme difficulty in measuring glacial erosion in active glacial settings, this study provides us with estimates of this process for remote locations worldwide,” says John Gosse, Dalhousie University.

Broad Applications and Collaborations

Knowing what drives erosion beneath glaciers is essential for managing landscapes, planning for long-term nuclear waste storage, and tracking how sediment and nutrients move across the globe.

Reference: “Drivers of global glacial erosion rates” by Sophie L. Norris, John C. Gosse, Romain Millan, Jeremie Mouginot, Antoine Rabatel, Mathieu Morlighem, Matthew S. M. Bolton and Richard B. Alley, 7 August 2025, Nature Geoscience.
DOI: 10.1038/s41561-025-01747-8

Norris started this work while a post-doctoral fellow at Dalhousie and concluded it at UVic. The team of collaborators included the University of Grenoble Alpes (France), Dartmouth College (US), Pennsylvania State University (US) and the University of California Irvine (US). The work was carried out in partnership with and financially supported by the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization.

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