World’s Glacier Mass Shrinks Again in 2024, UN Warns
AFP/APP
Geneva: All 19 of the world’s glacier regions experienced a net loss of mass in 2024 for the third consecutive year, the United Nations (UN) reported on Friday, emphasizing that preserving glaciers is now a matter of “survival.”
The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) stated that five of the last six years have witnessed the fastest glacier retreat on record. The announcement came on the inaugural World Day for Glaciers.
“Preserving glaciers is not just an environmental, economic, and societal necessity; it is a matter of survival,” said WMO chief Celeste Saulo.
Beyond the vast continental ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, more than 275,000 glaciers worldwide span approximately 700,000 square kilometers (270,000 square miles). However, these glaciers are rapidly shrinking due to climate change.
“The 2024 hydrological year marked the third consecutive year in which all 19 glacier regions experienced a net mass loss,” the WMO reported. Collectively, glaciers lost 450 billion tonnes of mass, according to data from the Swiss-based World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS). The year 2024 ranked as the fourth-worst for glacier loss, with 2023 being the worst on record.
Record-Breaking Loss Over 50 Years
“From 2022 to 2024, we saw the largest three-year glacier loss ever recorded,” Saulo noted.
While glacier mass loss in 2024 was relatively moderate in regions such as the Canadian Arctic and Greenland’s peripheral glaciers, some regions faced unprecedented losses. Glaciers in Scandinavia, Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, and North Asia recorded their worst year ever.
Since global records began in 1975, glaciers—excluding the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets—have lost over 9,000 billion tonnes of ice, the WGMS estimated.
“This is equivalent to an ice block the size of Germany with a thickness of 25 meters,” said WGMS director Michael Zemp.
If the current melting trend continues, many glaciers in western Canada, the United States, Scandinavia, central Europe, the Caucasus, and New Zealand may not survive the 21st century, the WMO warned.
Glaciers, along with ice sheets, store around 70 percent of the world’s freshwater resources. High mountain regions act as “water towers” for the planet, supplying water to millions of people downstream. Their disappearance would pose a severe threat to global water supplies.
‘Ignoring the Problem is Not a Solution’
The UN emphasized that the only viable solution to slowing glacier loss is reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat global warming.
“We can negotiate many things, but we cannot negotiate physical laws such as the melting point of ice,” said Stefan Uhlenbrook, WMO’s water and cryosphere director.
While he refrained from commenting on the return to office of US President Donald Trump, a known climate change skeptic, Uhlenbrook warned that “ignoring the problem may seem convenient for a short period, but it will not bring us closer to a solution.”
To mark the first World Day for Glaciers, the WGMS named a US glacier as its inaugural “Glacier of the Year.”
The South Cascade Glacier in Washington state has been continuously monitored since the 1950s, providing one of the longest uninterrupted records of glacier mass balance in the Western Hemisphere. The US Geological Survey has been measuring the glacier since 1958, while the WGMS’s records date back even further to 1952.
