Earth's glaciers 'will not survive the 21st century' scientists warn

[CharlieH]

Earth's glaciers 'will not survive the 21st century' scientists warn - as five of the past six years have seen the most rapid glacier retreat on record

Earth's 275,000 glaciers currently store around 70 per cent of the world's freshwater and are relied on by almost two billion people.

But to mark World Glacier Day on Friday, scientists now warn that glaciers in many parts of the world 'will not survive the 21st century'.

A report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) found that five of the last six years have seen the fastest glacier retreat on record.

 

As this melting releases vast quantities of water, experts warn that 10 million people around the world are now at risk of devastating glacial floods.

Since records began in 1975, glaciers have lost more than 9,000 billion tonnes of mass - equivalent to a layer of ice as big as Germany and 15 miles (25km) thick.

While this loss has been moderate in areas such as the Canadian Arctic or Greenland, some areas have been hit significantly harder.

In Europe’s Alps and Pyrenees, glaciers lost 40 per cent of their mass between 2000 and 2023 alone.

WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo says: 'Preservation of glaciers is a not just an environmental, economic and societal necessity. It’s a matter of survival.'

 

Naturally, glaciers shrink during the warm summer months and grow larger with compacted snow which falls over the winter.

This process has kept Earth's current glaciers stable throughout the seasons for tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

However, since humans began introducing large amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, this balance has now been disturbed.

A warming climate, which scientists have conclusively linked to human activity, means that glaciers melt faster in the summer and recover slower in the winter.

During 2024, the world's glaciers lost 450 billion tonnes of mass as they shrank - the fourth-worst year on record.

In that same period, glaciers in Scandinavia, Svalbard and North Asia saw their greatest annual loss on record.

According to the WMO's research, the period between 2022 and 2024 was the largest three-year loss of glacier mass ever recorded.

A recent study found that glaciers are now retreating so fast that they release an average of 273 billion tonnes of water every year, or 6,542 billion tons between 2000 and 2023.

 

 

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[SLOWHAND225]

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