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.

 

 

FULL STORY

 

We gonna die !!!

Oh noesssssssssssss

we are stuck in an ice age, the sooner we lose glaciers the merrier

19 hours ago, mordothailand said:

we are stuck in an ice age, the sooner we lose glaciers the merrier

And if they all melt, then sea levels rise up about 1-2 metres; double-triple that figure if nearby ice also melts.

4 hours ago, JimHuaHin said:

And if they all melt, then sea levels rise up about 1-2 metres; double-triple that figure if nearby ice also melts.

the net result is still more land where life can exist, antarctic is an entire continent that was green 35 million years ago

On 10/17/2025 at 12:49 PM, mordothailand said:

the net result is still more land where life can exist, antarctic is an entire continent that was green 35 million years ago

More nonsense from you.

 

The Critical Role of Glaciers in Global Water Systems and the Urgency of Climate Action

The Third Pole encompasses a vast, high-altitude region centred on the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding mountain ranges, including the Himalayas, Hindu Kush, Karakoram, Pamir, and Tien Shan—together covering more than one million square miles. It is termed the Third Pole because it holds the largest reserve of freshwater outside the Arctic and Antarctic. Approximately 16% to 25% of the global population depends on meltwater from this region.

Within the Himalayas alone, there are an estimated 15,000 glaciers. Their meltwater feeds several of Asia’s major rivers—such as the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Yamuna, Mekong, Salween, Irrawaddy, Yangtze, and Yellow River—supporting the freshwater needs of about 1.3 to 1.5 billion people downstream. The gradual storage and release of this water underpins agriculture, hydropower, and potable water supplies.

https://www.gwp.org/en/GWP-Caribbean/WE-ACT/news-page/the-critical-role-of-glaciers-in-global-water-systems-and-the-urgency-of-climate-action/

 

And the loss of glacier will destroy huge ecosystems:

 

Glaciers are melting faster than ever, threatening biodiversity and ecosystem stability worldwide

Now, a new paper published in Nature Reviews Biodiversity has shed further light on how glacial retreat drives unmitigated changes to ice, water, and land—and how their loss threatens the health of our planet.

The research review analyzed more than 160 research papers focused on specific aspects of glacial retreat to reveal the big picture: global impact on biodiversity and ecosystem function showing that thousands of species that have evolved to live in these unique ecosystems are threatened by the rapid melting of glaciers.

https://phys.org/news/2025-05-glaciers-faster-threatening-biodiversity-ecosystem.html

 

Here's a link to the abstract of the Nature Reviews Biodiversity article:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44358-025-00049-6

 

Changes affect things like the Gulf Stream which creates weather changes. Animals go extinct. Atlantic hurricanes increase. Coastland is destroyed.

During periods when Antarctica was temperate and forested, the Arctic and other northern regions still had glaciers.

 

1 hour ago, Alan Zweibel said:

And the loss of glacier will destroy huge ecosystems:

 

nonsense, glaciers prohibit plant growth, the sooner we get rid of them the merrier

1 hour ago, Purdey said:

when Antarctica was temperate and forested, the Arctic and other northern regions still had glaciers.

no they didnt, antarctica froze over 34 million years ago, arctic froze over just over 2.5 million years ago

21 minutes ago, mordothailand said:

nonsense, glaciers prohibit plant growth, the sooner we get rid of them the merrier

Tell that to scientists who study vast ecosystems and the 2 billion people that depend on meltwater.

Your understanding of evolution is seriously deficient.

1 hour ago, Purdey said:

Changes affect things like the Gulf Stream which creates weather changes. Animals go extinct. Atlantic hurricanes increase. Coastland is destroyed.

During periods when Antarctica was temperate and forested, the Arctic and other northern regions still had glaciers.

 

Actually, during the most recent period when antarctca supported forests there were no glaciers. The average temperature on Earth was 10 to 14 degrees Celsius higher than it is now thanks to much higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

12 minutes ago, Alan Zweibel said:

Tell that to scientists who study vast ecosystems and the 2 billion people that depend on meltwater.

Your understanding of evolution is seriously deficient.

frozen water is unusable for life, and melt water is an unnecessary delay and unevenly distributed 

1 minute ago, mordothailand said:

frozen water is unusable for life, and melt water is an unnecessary delay and unevenly distributed 

Simply moronic. During the dry seasons it's the meltwater from gradually melting glaciers that sustains life. 

5 minutes ago, Alan Zweibel said:

Simply moronic. During the dry seasons it's the meltwater from gradually melting glaciers that sustains life. 

simply moronic

I'm still waiting on the second Ice Age they swore was coming in the 70's.

TRUST the silence !  lol

1 minute ago, mordothailand said:

simply moronic

Echolalia much?

2 minutes ago, Slowhand225 said:

I'm still waiting on the second Ice Age they swore was coming in the 70's.

TRUST the silence !  lol

I'm still waiting for people who believe that BS about those predictions to wise up.

 

THE MYTH OF THE 1970s GLOBAL COOLING SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS

An enduring popular myth suggests that in the 1970s the climate science community was predicting “global cooling” and an “imminent” ice age, an observation frequently used by those who would undermine what climate scientists say today about the prospect of global warming. A review of the literature suggests that, on the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking as being one of the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales. More importantly than showing the falsehood of the myth, this review describes how scientists of the time built the foundation on which the cohesive enterprise of modern climate science now rests.

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/89/9/2008bams2370_1.xml?utm_source=chatgpt.com

 

The global cooling myth

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth

11 minutes ago, Alan Zweibel said:

I'm still waiting for people who believe that BS about those predictions to wise up.

https://www.agweb.com/opinion/doomsday-addiction-celebrating-50-years-failed-climate-predictions

4 minutes ago, mordothailand said:

https://www.agweb.com/opinion/doomsday-addiction-celebrating-50-years-failed-climate-predictions

The prestigious agweb. You'll note that none of the evidence about global cooling predictions is taken from actual scientific research.  Just from the media. Or maybe Time magazine is your idea of a scientific journal?

21 minutes ago, Alan Zweibel said:

The prestigious agweb. You'll note that none of the evidence about global cooling predictions is taken from actual scientific research.  Just from the media. Or maybe Time magazine is your idea of a scientific journal?

the doom predictions never fail to fail

 

UNITED NATIONS (AP)—A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.

 

https://tallahasseereports.com/2019/03/09/a-1989-ap-report-nations-wiped-off-face-of-the-earth-by-2000/

 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279432868_The_Maldives_A_Measure_of_Sea_Level_Changes_and_Sea_Level_Ethics

 

22 minutes ago, mordothailand said:

the doom predictions never fail to fail

 

UNITED NATIONS (AP)—A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.

 

https://tallahasseereports.com/2019/03/09/a-1989-ap-report-nations-wiped-off-face-of-the-earth-by-2000/

 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279432868_The_Maldives_A_Measure_of_Sea_Level_Changes_and_Sea_Level_Ethics

 

Nice deflection. You raised the issue of global cooling. And it turned out to be complete BS.

So what? Glaciers aren't historical monuments.

4 minutes ago, JackGats said:

So what? Glaciers aren't historical monuments.

Excellent point. One of the many unimportant things they do is sustain life for 2 billion people

32 minutes ago, Alan Zweibel said:

Nice deflection. You raised the issue of global cooling. And it turned out to be complete BS.

Actually you didn't raise it but you did defend it.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/31784219267889408

2 hours ago, Alan Zweibel said:

Excellent point. One of the many unimportant things they do is sustain life for 2 billion people

complete gibberish, the only thing they do is blocking plant life

4 hours ago, Alan Zweibel said:

evolution

 

No such thing.

 

Humans were created as we are now 6000 years ago. 

4 hours ago, Slowhand225 said:

I'm still waiting on the second Ice Age they swore was coming in the 70's.

TRUST the silence !  lol

Good thing to, as we ran out of oil in the 70's   

2 minutes ago, KhunLA said:

Good thing to, as we ran out of oil in the 70's   

…and not to mention that we’re all dead now from the climate catastrophe that was predicted.

On 11/1/2025 at 5:07 PM, novacova said:

…and not to mention that we’re all dead now from the climate catastrophe that was predicted.

Predicted by whom? Scientists? There are also people claiming that the apocalypse is coming any day now. Do we pay attention to them?