Five of the last six years have seen the most rapid glacier retreat on record, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization weather, climate and water agency said, on the inaugural World Day for Glaciers.
“Preservation of glaciers is not just an environmental, economic and societal necessity: it’s a matter of survival,” said WMO chief Celeste Saulo.
Beyond the continental ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, more than 275,000 glaciers worldwide cover approximately 700,000 square kilometres, said the WMO.
But they are rapidly shrinking due to climate change.
“The 2024 hydrological year marked the third year in a row in which all 19 glacier regions experienced a net mass loss,” the WMO added.
Together, they lost 450 billion tonnes of mass, the agency said, citing new data from the Swiss-based World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS).
It was the fourth worst year on record, with the worst being in 2023.
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”, said the WMO.
The agency said that together with ice sheets, glaciers store around 70 percent of the world’s freshwater resources, with high mountain regions acting like the world’s water towers.
If they disappear, that would threaten water supplies for millions of people downstream. (AFP)
