Our iconic west coast glaciers that reach almost to sea level, Fox and Franz Josef, are a part of our shared picture of the New Zealand outdoors. Tongues of ice that come down to such low altitudes are rare around the world and are rightly a big attraction for overseas tourists. A recent paper in which I played a small role shows that New Zealand glaciers generally are very sensitive to temperature, more so than to snowfall by quite a long way. That explains why our glaciers advanced through the 1980s and 1990s.

This is not good news for the future. The big glaciers are on the retreat again. Victoria University glaciologist Brian Anderson has modelled the effect of future warming on some of our glaciers and the results are dramatic. By the end of this century, all that might be left of the Franz Josef is a stub of ice up on the tops near the main divide, with matching loss of ice from our other glaciers, large and small. That would be a terrible outcome for our grandchildren, one I’d love to see us avoid. That’s why the new “Net Zero in New Zealand” report is so important. It shows how we can get on track to rein in the warming without killing the economy – setting an example for the world and helping avert the loss of our alpine treasures.

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