RESEARCH NEWS & VIEWS

Joan Seoane is at the Vall dHebron Institute
of Oncology, Vall dHebron Barcelona
University Hospital Campus, Natzaret, 08035
Barcelona, Spain, and at Instituci Catalana
de Recerca i Estudis Avanats (ICREA),
Barcelona.
e-mail: jseoane@vhio.net
1. Kreso, A. & Dick, J. E. Cell Stem Cell 14, 275291
(2014).
2. Singh, S. K. et al. Nature 432, 396401 (2004).
3. Bao, S. et al. Nature 444, 756760 (2006).
4. Lan, X. et al. Nature 549, 227232 (2017).
5. Sottoriva, A. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 110,
40094014 (2013).
6. Yap, T. A., Gerlinger, M., Futreal, P. A., Pusztai, L. &
Swanton, C. Sci. Transl. Med. 4, 127ps10 (2012).
7. Marusyk, A., Almendro, V. & Polyak, K. Nature Rev.
Cancer 12, 323334 (2012).
8. Johnson, B. E. et al. Science 343, 189193
(2014).
9. Vanner, R. J. et al. Cancer Cell 26, 3347 (2014).
10. Pollen, A. A. et al. Cell 163, 5567 (2015).
11. Chen, J. et al. Nature 488, 522526 (2012).
This article was published online on 30 August 2017.

CLIMATE SCIENCE with pre-industrial times (1851.80). When

projecting climate, such 30-year averages

The future of are used to present estimates. Scenarios

of warming are constructed with respect to
pre-industrial times, but because of lack of

Asias glaciers
information it is necessary to begin glaciologi-
cal simulations at the present day. In these six
simulations, HMA glaciers suffered more
warming (2.1C) than the global average
Glaciers in the high mountains of Asia are a crucial water resource, but are at (1.5C) and there was substantial variation
risk from global warming. Modelling suggests that the glaciers will shed mass in between subregions from warming of 1.9C
direct proportion to the warming to which they are exposed. See Letter p.257 in the Eastern Himalaya to warming of 2.3C in
the Hindu Kush mountain range.
Considerable parts of HMA glaciers are
J. GRAHAM COGLEY domestic use, hydropower and irrigation. covered by a layer of debris, caused by the
In 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on erosion of material surrounding the glacier.

T
he 2015 Paris climate agreement aspires
to limit the average global temperature
rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial lev-
els by the end of this century (see go.nature.
com/2efxikg). Intensive work is under way to
determine what return we would get for the
formidable effort required to achieve this goal.
On page 257, Kraaijenbrink etal.1 contribute
to this work by modelling glaciers in the high
mountains of Asia (HMA) and showing how
these glaciers respond to different levels of
warming. The authors demonstrate that even
if the 1.5C target is met, about one-third of
the present-day mass of HMA glaciers will be
lost by the end of this century. The work could
have major consequences for communities in
the region that depend on glacial meltwater for
Climate Change reported climate projections2
based on four scenarios called Representative
Concentration Pathways (RCPs) that differ in
terms of the amounts of greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere. For example, RCP2.6 assumes
that greenhouse-gas emissions peak during
20102020 and subsequently decline, whereas
RCP8.5 assumes that emissions continue to
rise steeply throughout the twenty-first cen-
tury. Kraaijenbrink and colleagues considered
110climate simulations obtained from the
Coupled Model Intercomparison Project3,
each based on one of the four RCPs. Of the
110simulations, the authors identified 6 (a sub-
set of the RCP2.6 simulations) that yielded an
average global temperature rise of 1.41.6C by
the end of this century (20712100), compared
Depending on its thickness, this debris can
either suppress or accelerate glacial melt.
Meltwater ponds on glacial surfaces can also
enhance mass loss (Fig.1). Kraaijenbrink etal.
therefore developed a glacier model that incor-
porates the effects of both debris and meltwa-
ter ponds. They then used satellite imagery to
measure the extent of these features on more
than 33,000HMA glaciers those with an area
larger than 0.4square kilometres accounting
for almost all of the ice in the region.
Next, the authors calculated the present-day
mass of the glaciers using a model4 called Glab-
Top2. They estimated that there are almost
51012 tonnes of ice currently stored in HMA
glaciers substantially less than the amount
suggested by some previous estimates5. Finally,
the authors combined their glacier model
with projected temperature and precipita-

GETTY
tion changes from the climate simulations to
determine the glaciers long-term evolution.
Kraaijenbrink et al. show that about two-
thirds of the ice currently stored in HMA
glaciers will be lost by 20712100 if no efforts
are made to prevent climate change. This corre-
sponds to RCP8.5, and is the track on which we
are currently travelling, despite signs of more-
invigorated policy-making relating to climate.
By contrast, the authors find that only about
one-third of the ice will be lost if the 1.5C target
is achieved. Substantial differences in precipita-
tion changes across the 110 climate simulations
have no marked impact on their projections.
One of the authors most striking findings
is that the mass loss is directly proportional to
the warming to which the glaciers are exposed
(Fig.2). In particular, their results suggest that
about 7% of HMA ice would be retained for
every 1C of averted warming. If there was no
Figure 1 | NgozumpaGlacier. Meltwater ponds on the debris-covered NgozumpaGlacier in Sagarmatha warming between 18511880 and 20712100,
National Park, Nepal. about 22% of the present-day ice mass would

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 NEWS & VIEWS RESEARCH

Kraaijenbrink and colleagues glacier model

100 has some innovative features that might raise
eyebrows among glaciologists, but it is diffi-
cult to find fault with it as a pioneering effort.
Mass loss of HMA glaciers (%)

80
60
40
20
0 response to warming. The authors have shown
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Warming of HMA glaciers (C)
Figure 2 | Future mass loss of glaciers in the high mountains of Asia (HMA). Kraaijenbrink etal.1
determine how much of the current mass of HMA glaciers will be lost by the end of this century, depending
on the amount of warming that the glaciers are subjected to, with respect to pre-industrial levels. The authors
use climate simulations3 based on four scenarios adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change2
the red points correspond to simulations for three of the scenarios, whereas the blue point corresponds to
a subset of simulations for the fourth scenario that yield an average global temperature rise of about 1.5C
(the average global temperature rise aspired to by the 2015 Paris climate agreement), and an HMA warming
of about 2.1C. Remarkably, the authors find that mass loss of HMA glaciers is directly proportional to
warming. The solid line is a fit to the simulations, which suggests that if there had been no additional warming
since pre-industrial times, about 22% of the mass would be lost by the end of this century, whereas a warming
of about 11C would be required to remove all of the ice. The error bars correspond to 1 standard deviation.
be lost over this time span. In fact, in one of decades for glaciers to reach the size sustained
their own simulations (which was not part by a given climate. More speculatively, the
of the 110 simulations), in which there is no work indicates that a warming of about 11C
warming after the present day, the authors find would be required to remove all of the ice. Such
a mass loss of 14% by 20712100 implying a value is much higher than any of those in the
that about 8% of the present ice mass was lost 110 climate simulations, suggesting that HMA
between 18511880 and today. Mass loss in glaciers are not going to disappear altogether
the absence of warming reflects a slow adjust- by 2100, let alone by 2035 (as has previously
ment to an earlier climate because it can take been suggested6).
Nevertheless, more work is needed to validate
the model because most of the required meas-
urements have not yet been made. The authors
are operating in reconnaissance mode and a
long list of questions remains for the future
from whether all the climate simulations
deserve equal standing, to how best to vali-
date the glacier model, to the practical impli-
cations of subregional variations in glaciers
that achieving the 1.5C target will conserve a
substantial fraction of Asias water resources
and that, if we fail in this regard, we will pay in
direct proportion to the extent of the failure.
J. Graham Cogley is in the Department of
Geography, Trent University, Peterborough,
Ontario K9L 0G2, Canada.
e-mail: gcogley@trentu.ca
1. Kraaijenbrink, P. D. A., Bierkens, M. F. P., Lutz, A. F. &
Immerzeel, W. W. Nature 549, 257260 (2017).
2. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science
Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (eds Stocker, T.F. et al.) (Cambridge
Univ. Press,2013).
3. Taylor, K. E., Stouffer, R. J. & Meehl, G. A. Bull. Am.
Meteorol. Soc. 93, 485498 (2012).
4. Frey, H. et al. Cryosphere 8, 23132333 (2014).
5. Pfeffer, W. T. et al. J. Glaciol. 60, 537552 (2014).
6. Cruz, R. V. et al. in Climate Change 2007: Impacts,
Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working
Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (eds
Parry,M. et al.) 469506 (Cambridge Univ. Press,
2007).

PAL A EO NTO LO GY understand the early history of the entire actin-

opterygian clade. This is no trivial matter: the

Plenty of fish in the tree Actinopterygii comprise around half of all liv-
ing vertebrate species.
Confined to sub-Saharan Africa and the
Nile region, living polypterids have vari-
Polypterid fish were considered to be archaic outliers of the bony-fish grouping. ously been considered either as intermediates
Fossil analysis now places them at the heart of early ray-finned fishes, a radical between ray-finned and lobe-finned fishes or
change that transforms the timing of their evolution. See Letter p.265 as living fossils, species that have survived
from an earlier era with minimal evolutionary
change1,8. Polypterids have also been used as
M I C H A E L C O AT E S because their fins are mostly supported by models for investigating the kinds of change
slender bony rays, rather than by the pre- that might have occurred in the fins or limbs of

A
proverbial odd fish, the bichir
(Polypterus) is so extraordinary that
the palaeontologist Georges Cuvier
claimed that its discovery alone justified Napo-
leon Bonapartes expedition to Egypt1. Its unu-
sual mixture of seemingly primitive and highly
specialized features, perhaps best exemplified
by the distinctive characteristics of its mus-
cular pectoral fins2,3, has led to a lengthy and
convoluted classification history. The settled
consensus on the basis of genetic and fossil
analysis4 is that polypterids (Polypterus and its
sister genus, Erpetoichthys) are members of the
ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii), so-called
dominantly muscular (but also ray-bearing)
appendages of lobe-finned fishes.
However, because nearly all of the earliest
fossil actinopterygians (informally grouped
under the name palaeoniscoids) are widely
agreed to be more closely related to all other
living members of the Actinopterygii5,6 than
to polypterids, the polypterids have been
excluded to the outer margins of the clade.
Thus, polypterids are considered to have split
off from the rest of the actinopterygians close
to the start of their evolutionary tree. On page
265, Giles et al.7 overthrow this established
view, with radical consequences for how we
the earliest vertebrates that spent a substantial
part of their life out of the water9,10. However,
polypterid-centred research is hobbled by the
lack of a substantial fossil record. The scanty
remains available date back only as far as the
mid-Cretaceous period11 (around 100 million
years ago). They therefore shed little light on
primitive conditions, and require a credibil-
ity-stretching lineage extension of more than
280million years to reach the implied age of
their departure from the rest of the Actino
pterygii in the middle Devonian period5
(around 390 million to 380 million years ago).
Giles et al. find a solution to this problematic

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