Glaciers from all over the world disappear faster than ever, with the last three -year period to see the greatest loss of registered glacial mass, according to a report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), it opens a new tab published on Friday.
The 9,000 lost ice gigatons of the glaciers since 1975 are approximately equivalent to “an ice block of the size of Germany with the thickness of 25 meters,” said Michael Zemp, director of the World World Monitoring Service in Switzerland, during a press conference that announces the report at the UN headquarters in Ginebra.
It is expected that the dramatic loss of ice, from the Arctic to the Alps, from South America to the Tibetan plateau, opens a new tab, accelerates as climate change, caused by burning fossil fuels, raises the highest global temperatures. This would probably exacerbate economic, environmental and social problems worldwide as sea levels and these key water sources decrease.
The report coincides with a Unesco summit in Paris that marks the first day of the world for glaciers, urging global action to protect glaciers around the world.
Zemp said that five of the last six years recorded the greatest losses, with glaciers losing 450 gigatons of mass only in 2024.
The accelerated loss has made the mountain glaciers one of the largest taxpayers to the increase in sea level, which puts millions at risk of devastating floods and damaging water routes on which billions of people depend for hydroelectric energy and agriculture.
Stefan Uhlenbrook, director of Water and Cryosphere of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), said that around 275,000 glaciers remain worldwide that, together with the layers of Antarctic ice and Greenland, comprise approximately 70% of the world's fresh water.
“We need to advance our scientific knowledge, we need to advance through better observation systems, through better forecasts and better early alert systems for the planet and people,” said Uhlenbrook.
Dangers and deities
Around 1,100 million people live in mountain communities, suffering from the most immediate impacts of glacier loss, due to risks with natural risks and unreliable water sources. Remote locations and difficult land also hinder cheap solutions.
It is expected that the increase in temperatures worsen droughts in areas that depend on the snow layer for fresh water, while increasing the gravity and frequency of hazards such as avalanches, landslides, sudden floods and floods of the explosion of glacial lakes (Glof).
A Peruvian farmer who lives downstream of a retired glacier has taken the issue to the courts, demanding the giant of German energy RWE on the one hand of the flood defenses of the glacial lake proportional to its historical world emissions.
“The changes we see in the field are literally heartbreaking,” said the Heidi Sevestre glacologist, Secretariat of the Arctic Monitoring and Evaluation Program. Reuters Outside the Unesco headquarters in Paris on Wednesday.
“Things in certain regions are actually happening much faster than we anticipate,” Sevestre added, pointing out a recent trip to the Rwenzori mountains, located in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in East Africa, where the glaciers are now expected to disappear in 2030.
Sevestre has worked with the indigenous Bakonzo communities of the region who believe that a deity called Kitasamba lives in the glaciers.
“Can you imagine the deep spiritual connection, this strong attachment they have towards the glaciers and what could mean that their glaciers are disappearing?” Sevestre said.
The glacial fusion in East Africa has led to an increase in local conflicts on water, according to the new Undesco report, and although the impact on a global scale is minimal, the drip of the melting glaciers of the whole world is having a compound impact.
Between 2000 and 2023, the fusion of mountain glaciers has caused 18 millimeters to increase worldwide sea level, approximately 1 mm per year. Each millimeter can expose up to 300,000 people to annual floods, according to the World Glacier Monitoring Service.
“Billions of people are connected with glaciers, they know it or not, and that will require billions of people to protect them,” Sevestre said.
