Most of Earth’s near-surface permafrost could be gone by 2100, an international team of scientists has concluded after comparing current climate trends to the planet’s climate 3 million years ago.

The team found that the amount of near-surface permafrost could drop by 93% compared to the preindustrial period of 1850 to 1900. That is under the most extreme warming scenario in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

By 2100, Earth’s near-surface permafrost, within the upper 10 to 13 feet of the soil layer, may exist only in the eastern Siberian uplands, Canadian High Arctic Archipelago and northernmost Greenland — just like it did in the mid-Pliocene Warm Period.

The research, published Aug. 28 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was led by Donglin Guo of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology. Scientists from the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Canada, The Netherlands, France and Sweden collaborated in the research.

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