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glaciers
'Grim News for the Planet' as Arctic Sea Ice Hits Record Low
"The environment does not care about politics. Keep spewing greenhouse gases and face the consequences."
Mar 06, 2025
European Union officials said the Copernicus Climate Change Service had issued its latest "stark reminder of why climate action is urgent" when the bloc's program announced that it observed less sea ice covering the Earth's oceans last month than at any other point in recorded history.
In the Arctic, sea ice reached its lowest monthly extent on record, at 8% below average, in early February, and it remained below the previous record for the rest of the month.
The oceans were missing an area of ice roughly the size of the United Kingdom last month, according to Copernicus (C3S), and the finding was not an anomaly in recent sea ice observations.
February marked the third consecutive month in which record low sea ice levels for the corresponding month were observed in the Arctic.
C3S reported that in the Antarctic, sea ice levels have rapidly declined in 2025 after appearing to recover to near-record levels in December 2024.
Last month, sea ice near the South Pole reached its fourth-lowest monthly extent, at 26% below average.
C3S said the daily sea ice extent in the Antarctic may have also reached its annual minimum toward the end of the month, which will be confirmed later in March; if confirmed, it would be the second-lowest annual minimum in the satellite record.
"February 2025 continues the streak of record or near-record temperatures observed throughout the last two years," said Samanatha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. "One of the consequences of a warmer world is melting sea ice, and the record or near-record low sea ice cover at both poles has pushed global sea ice cover to an all-time minimum."
The melting sea ice was recorded as global average temperatures rose 1.59°C (2.8°F) above the pre-industrial average last month, making it the third-warmest February on record.
In Europe, the temperatures that most exceeded averages were recorded last month in parts of Scandinavia, Iceland, and the Alps. Outside of Europe, "temperatures were most above average over large parts of the Arctic."
The low extent of sea ice will lead to "more solar heat absorbed by the darker oceans," and "faster warming," said Simon Oldridge, a climate campaigner.
The loss of sea ice can also lead to the collapse of ocean currents that are crucial for marine life to thrive.
C3S reported on the record-low sea ice levels as campaigners in the U.S. and around the world condemned recent anti-climate actions taken by U.S. President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, including the country's exit from the Paris climate agreement, the GOP's passing of a bill to end a federal program aimed at reducing planet-heating methane emissions, and Trump's push to fast-track fossil fuel projects—as scientists warn that new extractive projects have no place on a pathway to limiting planetary heating and avoiding its worst impacts.
"The environment does not care about politics," said public health expert Ali Khan. "Keep spewing greenhouse gases and face the consequences."
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Study Shows Glaciers Have Lost '3 Olympic Swimming Pools Per Second' Since 2000
One researcher said the findings support calls "for urgent and concrete actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and associated warming."
Feb 20, 2025
An international science project on Wednesday published a study in the journal Nature showing that glaciers have lost an average of 273 billion metric tons of ice annually since 2000—depleting freshwater resources, driving sea-level rise, and underscoring the need for sweeping global action to significantly reduce planet-heating pollution.
The Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (GlaMBIE) team compiled major studies to estimate global mass change from 2000, when glaciers—excluding Antarctica and Greenland's ice sheets—held about 121,728 billion metric tons of ice, to 2023.
The researchers found that during that period, the world lost 5% of all glacier ice, with regional losses for the full two decades ranging from 2% on the Antarctic and Subantarctic islands, to 39% in Central Europe.
That's a loss of 6,542 billion metric tons total or 273 billion metric tons per year, "the equivalent of three Olympic swimming pools per second," noted France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).
Glaciologist Michael Zemp, who co-led the study, said in a statement that the annual figure "amounts to what the entire global population consumes in 30 years, assuming three liters per person and day."
"Every tenth of a degree warming that we avoid saves us money, saves us lives, saves us problems."
Although the researchers highlighted the annual average, they also emphasized that the rate of glacier ice loss "increased significantly" from 231 billion metric tons annually during the first half of the study period to 314 billion metric tons per year in the second half. In other words, the amount of ice being lost surged by 36% between the two ranges.
Zemp, a professor at Switzerland's University of Zurich and director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service, toldAgence France-Presse that the findings are "shocking" and warned that many smaller glaciers "will not survive the present century."
Stephen Plummer, an Earth observation applications scientist at the European Space Agency, said that "these findings are not only crucial for advancing our scientific understanding of global glacier changes, but also provide a valuable baseline to help regions address the challenges of managing scarce freshwater resources and contribute to developing effective mitigation strategies to combat rising sea level."
The ice loss over the GlaMBIE study's full timeline led to about 18 mm or 0.7 inches of sea-level rise. The researchers projected future losses that lead to 32-67 mm, or 1.26-2.6 inches, of sea-level rise by 2040.
"We are facing higher sea-level rise until the end of this century than expected before," Zemp told AFP, referring to the latest projection from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
"You have to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, it is as simple and as complicated as that," Zemp said. "Every tenth of a degree warming that we avoid saves us money, saves us lives, saves us problems."
The GlaMBIE project manager, Samuel Nussbaumer, similarly toldOceanographic, that "our observations and recent modeling studies indicate that glacier mass loss will continue and possibly accelerate until the end of this century," which underpins the IPCC's "call for urgent and concrete actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and associated warming to limit the impact of glacier wastage on local geohazards, regional freshwater availability, and global sea-level rise."
The team's findings were released during the U.N.'s International Year of Glaciers' Preservation and the Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences—and they "will feed into the next IPCC report, due in 2029," according to CNRS.
Scientists from around the world who were not involved with the study were alarmed by its revelations—which come after the hottest year in human history and amid humanity's failure to curb planet-heating emissions, largely from fossil fuels.
Martin Siegert, a professor at the United Kingdom's University of Exeter, said in a statement that "this research is concerning to us, because it predicts further glacier loss, which can be considered like a 'canary in the coal mine' for ice sheet reaction to global warming and far more sea-level rise this century and beyond. The IPCC indicates 0.5-1 meters this century—but that is with a 66% certainty—hence 1/3 chance it could be higher under 'strong' warming, which unfortunately is the pathway we are on presently."
Andrew Shepherd, a professor at Northumbria University, another U.K. institution, explained that "glacier melting has two main impacts; it causes sea-level rise and it disrupts the water supply in rivers that are fed by meltwater."
"Around 2 billion people depend on meltwater from glaciers and so their retreat is a big problem for society—it's not just that we are losing them from our landscape, they are an important part of our daily lives," he said. "Even small amounts of sea-level rise matter because it leads to more frequent coastal flooding. Every centimeter of sea-level rise exposes another 2 million people to annual flooding somewhere on our planet."
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Global Water Woes the 'Canary in the Coal Mine' for Climate Calamity: WMO
"As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated. It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water," the WMO lead said.
Oct 07, 2024
The climate crisis is destabilizing the world's water cycle, depriving millions of people of the freshwater resources they need while inundating others with deadly and catastrophic floods.
That's the picture painted by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)'s third-ever State of Global Water Resources report, released on Monday, which found that 2023 was the driest year for the world's rivers in more than three decades.
"Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement. "We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods, and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems, and economies."
A total of 3.6 billion people struggle to access sufficient water for at least one month per year, according to U.N. Water, and this number is projected to swell to over 5 billion by 2050. In 2023, which was also the hottest year on record, river catchment areas around the world were at their driest in 33 years. As in the two years before, more than half of all catchment areas saw abnormal conditions, with most of them seeing below-average water flow.
Especially hard-hit river systems included the Mississippi and Amazon basins, which shrank to record-low water levels, as well as riparian systems in much of Northern, Central, and South America. Argentina's GDP shrank by 3% due to drought, the WMO found. Meanwhile, the report showed how major river systems in Asia—the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Mekong river basins—were drier than usual across almost all of their reach.
Another threat to freshwater access is the melting of glaciers. In 2023, the world's glaciers lost their greatest amount of mass in 50 years at over 600 metric gigatons of water. This ice loss was primarily driven by melting in western North America and Europe's Alps. Switzerland's glaciers shrank by 10% in two years.
"It was either too dry or too wet—and neither is encouraging."
"The worldwide loss of glacier volume, equivalent to 600 gigatons of water according to the latest WMO report, is alarming," said report contributor Robert Reinecke of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. "It is the greatest loss we have witnessed in the past five decades."
Saulo added: "Melting ice and glaciers threaten long-term water security for many millions of people. And yet we are not taking the necessary urgent action."
While 2023 saw drought and ice melt, its high temperatures combined with the shift from La Niña to El Niño halfway through and the positive phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole also fueled extreme precipitation events.
"It was either too dry or too wet—and neither is encouraging," Reinecke said. "We have to expect both extremes more frequently as global temperatures continue to rise."
Africa saw the deadliest flooding, with Storm Daniel causing a dam collapse in Libya that killed more than 11,000 people in September 2023. Also hard hit were the Greater Horn of Africa, Congo, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Malawi.
"As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated," Saulo said. "It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture which is conducive to heavy rainfall. More rapid evaporation and drying of soils worsen drought conditions."
To respond to these shifting conditions, WMO urged more monitoring and data sharing and said that the Early Warnings for All initiative must cover water-related hazards.
"Far too little is known about the true state of the world's freshwater resources," Saulo said. "We cannot manage what we do not measure. This report seeks to contribute to improved monitoring, data-sharing, cross-border collaboration, and assessments."
In response to the report, water advocate Mina Guli also called for increased conservation efforts.
"To tackle this crisis, we must invest more resources into protecting and restoring our freshwater ecosystems. Healthy rivers, lakes, and wetlands do so much more than provide water—they are our best defense against the worsening impacts of climate change and play a crucial role in ensuring food and water security while also reversing nature loss," Guli wrote on social media.
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