GENEVA (AN) — With many glaciers in some areas not expected to survive the 21st century, the U.N. weather agency says glacial melt will have massive repercussions for the natural world and people everywhere.
The potential risks from cascading impacts that extend beyond mountain regions to communities globally range from depleted water supplies to increased sea level rise, the World Meteorological Organization said on Friday to mark the United Nations' first annual World Day for Glaciers.
World Water Day, highlighting glacier preservation, follows on Saturday. Daylong talks on glaciers and hydrology were held at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris and U.N. headquarters in New York. An International Glacier Preservation Conference is to be held in May.
“Preservation of glaciers is a not just an environmental, economic and societal necessity,” said WMO's Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, an Argentine meteorologist and educator. "It’s a matter of survival."
Between 2000 and 2023, glaciers – separate from the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets – lost 5% of their remaining ice, according to findings published last month in Nature. The study, coordinated by the Swiss-based World Glacier Monitoring Service, measured losses ranging from 2% in the Antarctic and Subantarctic Islands to almost 40% in Central Europe.
Based on global observations, WGMS estimates glaciers lost over 9,000 billion tons of ice since records began in 1975. “This is equivalent to a huge ice block of the size of Germany with a thickness of 25 meters," said WGMS' director, Michael Zemp, a University of Zürich geography professor.
'One of humanity's most urgent challenges'
The losses mean that at present melt rates many glaciers in Western Canada and the United States, Scandinavia, Central Europe, the Caucasus, New Zealand, and the Tropics will not survive the 21st century, WMO says.
A third of all glaciers are expected to disappear by 2050, including Furtwängler Glacier, the most iconic glacier on East Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro. Some people view glaciers as gods that are melting.
Glaciers are seen as the abode of gods and spirits by Indigenous peoples in Asia, Latin America, the Pacific and East Africa – places with rituals and festivals recognized in UNESCO's Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
"The preservation of glaciers stands as one of humanity's most urgent challenges," said Audrey Azoulay, the director-general of UNESCO, which along with WMO launched the year of events to highlight the need for making greater efforts at preserving glaciers.
The two U.N. agencies are campaigning to save these moving rivers of ice that supply more than 2 billion people with fresh water worldwide.
They note 275,000 glaciers cover 700,000 square kilometers of the planet. Glaciers and ice sheets store 70% of the world's freshwater. As these ice formations rapidly retreat, nature's losses impacts economies and cultures.
"These ancient ice formations are not just frozen water – they are the guardians of our planet's climate history, the source of life for billions, and sacred places for many cultures," Azoulay said. "Their rapid disappearance is a stark reminder that we must act now."
Stefan Uhlenbrook, WMO's director of hydrology, water and cryosphere, said slowing the glacial melt depends on cuts in fossil fuel burning.
"The only thing that really helps is stabilizing the impact. Putting some blankets on glaciers is really only temporary," he said. "We need to stabilize global warming by reducing or minimizing greenhouse gases."
