The melting of glaciers across the planet as a result of climate change continues. According to the latest data, their mass in 2024 has again shrunk appreciably in all zones where they still exist.
Earth’s glaciers shrinking
All 19 of the world’s glacial regions would experience a net loss of mass in 2024 for the third consecutive year, the United Nations said in a statement on Friday, warning that saving the planet’s glaciers was now a matter of “survival”.
Five of the past six years have been the fastest ever recorded for glacier retreat, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization said during the inauguration of World Glacier Day.
According to WMO, in addition to the continental ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, there are more than 275,000 glaciers worldwide, covering an area of approximately 700,000 square kilometers (270,000 square miles). But they are rapidly shrinking due to climate change. “The 2024 hydrological year was the third consecutive year in which all 19 glacial regions suffered a net loss of mass,” the WMO said.
Together they lost 450 billion tons of mass, the agency said, citing new data from the Switzerland-based World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS).
It was the fourth worst year on record, with the worst being 2023.
Huge loss in 50 years
Glacier mass loss last year was relatively moderate in regions such as the Canadian Arctic and Greenland’s peripheral glaciers, but glaciers in Scandinavia, Norway’s Svalbard archipelago and northern Asia experienced their worst year on record.
The WGMS, which is based on worldwide observations, estimates that glaciers separated from continental ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica have lost more than 9,000 billion tons since observations began in 1975.
“It’s the equivalent of a huge ice block the size of Germany and 25 meters thick,” said WGMS Director Michael Zemp.
At current rates of melting, many glaciers in western Canada and the United States, Scandinavia, Central Europe, the Caucasus and New Zealand “will not survive the 21st century,” the WMO said.
The agency notes that together with the ice sheet, glaciers store about 70% of the world’s freshwater resources, with high mountain regions acting as the world’s water towers. If they disappear, it will jeopardize the water supply for millions of people living downstream.
Ignoring the problem
For the UN, the only possible answer is to fight global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“We can negotiate many things in the end, but we cannot negotiate physical laws like the melting point of ice,” said Stefan Uhlenbrook, director of WMO’s Water and Cryosphere Department.
He declined to comment on the return to office of U.S. President Donald Trump, a climate change skeptic who pulled the United States out of the historic 2015 Paris climate accords.
However, Uhlenbrook said that “ignoring the problem” of climate change “ might be convenient for a short period of time,” but “that will not help us to get closer to a solution.”
On the occasion of the first World Glacier Day, WGMS named an American glacier as its first Glacier of the Year.
South Cascade Glacier in Washington State has been continuously monitored since the 1950s, and it is one of the longest continuous records of glacial mass balance in the western hemisphere.
The U.S. Geological Survey, a government agency that studies the natural environment, has been taking measurements on the glacier since 1958, while WGMS records began even earlier, in 1952.
According to phys.org
