SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
world meteorological organization
Scientists Warn Major Glaciers Won't 'Survive This Century,' With Grave Impacts for Billions
"Preservation of glaciers is not just an environmental, economic, and societal necessity," said one expert. "It's a matter of survival."
Mar 21, 2025
Scientists on Friday spent the United Nations' World Water Day and first-ever World Day for Glaciers warning about how fossil fuel-driven global warming melts ice across the planet, endangering freshwater resources and causing seas to rise, with implications for ecosystems, economies, and billions of people.
In a Friday statement, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo pointed to a publication that the U.N. agency released earlier this week: "WMO's State of the Global Climate 2024 report confirmed that from 2022-224, we saw the largest three-year loss of glaciers on record."
"Seven of the 10 most negative mass balance years have occurred since 2016," Saulo continued. "Preservation of glaciers is not just an environmental, economic, and societal necessity. It's a matter of survival."
The WMO report was followed by the Friday launch of a 174-page document from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that stresses how "billions of people depend on the fresh water that flows from increasingly fragile mountain environments."
"As the water towers of the world, mountains are an essential source of fresh water for (irrigated) agriculture, power generation, industry, and large and growing populations—in the mountains and also downstream," the report details. "Generally, due to higher precipitation and lower evaporation, mountains supply more surface runoff per unit area than lowlands, providing 55-60% of global annual freshwater flows."
The document, The United Nations World Water Development Report 2025—Mountains and glaciers: Water towers, notes that "major cities that have been critically dependent on mountain waters include Addis Ababa, Barcelona, Bogotá, Jakarta, Kathmandu, La Paz, Lima, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Mexico City, New Delhi, New York, Quito, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo."
"Globally, up to two-thirds of irrigated agriculture may depend on mountain waters," the report states, "while the number of people in lowlands that strongly depend on water from mountains increased worldwide from around 0.6 billion in the 1960s to some 1.8 billion in the 2000s. An additional 1 billion people in the lowlands benefit from supportive mountain runoff contributions."
"Most of the world's glaciers, including those in mountains, are melting at an accelerated rate worldwide," the publication adds. "Combined with accelerating permafrost thaw, declining snow cover, and more erratic snowfall patterns... this will have significant and irreversible impacts on local, regional, and global hydrology, including water availability."
“The 21st of March 2025 is being celebrated as the first-ever World Day for Glaciers. ‘Celebrate’? Yes, we should celebrate glaciers and their crucial role in sustaining life on Earth for future generations,” says @iceblogger.bsky.social. Great stats here on the importance of glaciers 🧊
[image or embed]
— Covering Climate Now (@coveringclimatenow.org) March 21, 2025 at 8:31 AM
The UNESCO publication follows the international Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (GlaMBIE) team's study, published in the journal Nature last month, showing that glaciers have lost an average of 273 billion metric tons of ice annually since 2000.
That figure "amounts to what the entire global population consumes in 30 years, assuming three liters per person and day," Michael Zemp, a professor at Switzerland's University of Zurich and director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service who co-led the GlaMBIE study, explained at the time.
Zemp pointed to that finding and others on Friday, noting that from 2000-23, glacier melt caused global seas to rise 18 mm or about 0.7 inches. He said, "This might not sound much, but it has a big impact: Every millimeter [of] sea-level rise exposes an additional 200,000 to 300,000 people to annual flooding."
In a U.N. video, experts also highlighted parts of the globe that are particularly impacted by melting glaciers. Zemp explained that in "the European Alps, we are one of the regions that is most affected by climate change. Warming is about double the global average, and indeed, glaciers in the Alps are one of the most suffering around the world."
"We have lost, since 2000, almost 40% of the remaining ice. And that means under current melt rates, glaciers will not survive this century in the Alps," he warned.
Today is the first-ever #WorldGlaciersDay! Glaciers provide water for millions of people, regulate sea levels, and support biodiversity. Yet glaciers are disappearing at an alarming rate. #ClimateAction is key to protecting them & supporting those who rely on glaciers. www.un.org/en/observanc...
[image or embed]
— IngerAndersen.bsky.social (@ingerandersen.bsky.social) March 21, 2025 at 9:57 AM
Scientists are also concerned about the Hindu Kush in the Himalayas, which are often called the "third pole because they hold a lot of water resources," WMO's Sulagna Mishra said in the video. "Here, more than 120 million farmers in the downstream areas are impacted directly because of the melting of the glaciers."
"So, when there are a lot of floods, for example, happening because of melting of glaciers, the livelihoods are changed, people tend to migrate from one place to another," she continued. "So when you ask me how many people are actually impacted, it's really everyone."
As Carbon Briefreported Friday:
Dr. Aditi Mukherji—the director of the climate change, adaptation, and mitigation impact action platform of the CGIAR—tells Carbon Brief that the report is an important call for more "adaptation efforts and funding."
She says that mountain-dwelling communities are "already quite vulnerable due to their remote location and other developmental deficits" and are "increasingly losing their way of life due to no fault of theirs."
However, in some parts of the world, especially the United States, such calls face the pro-fossil fuel agenda of polluting companies and right-wing policymakers that are working to quash the movement for a just transition to clean energy by any means necessary.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Never Happened Before': WMO Finds Past 10 Years Have Been 10 Hottest on Record
"While a single year above 1.5°C of warming does not indicate that the long-term temperature goals of the Paris agreement are out of reach, it is a wake-up call," wrote the secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.
Mar 19, 2025
A report released by the World Meteorological Organization on Tuesday found that not only was 2024 the warmest year in a 175-year observational period, reaching a global surface temperature of roughly 1.55°C above the preindustrial average for the first time, but each of the past 10 years was also individually the 10 warmest on record.
"That's never happened before," Chris Hewitt, the director of the WMO's climate services division, of the clustering of the 10 warmest years all in the most recent decade, toldThe New York Times.
All told, the agency's State of the Global Climate 2024adds new details to the public's understanding of a planet that is getting steadily warmer thanks to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
2024 clearly surpassed 2023 in terms of global surface temperature. 2023 recorded a temperature of 1.45°C above the average for the years 1850-1900, which is used to represent preindustrial conditions, according to the report.
The report from the WMO, a United Nations agency, includes "the latest science-based update" on key climate indicators, such as atmospheric carbon dioxide, ocean heat content, and glacier mass balance. Many of these sections report grim milestones.
In 2023, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide reached the highest levels in the last 800,000 years, for example, and in 2024, ocean heat content reached the highest level recorded in the over half-century observational period, topping the previous heat record that was set in 2023.
As of 2023, two other greenhouse gases, methane and nitrous oxide, also reached levels unseen in the last 800,000 years.
"Over the course of 2024, our oceans continued to warm, sea levels continued to rise, and acidification increased. The frozen parts of Earth's surface, known as the cryosphere, are melting at an alarming rate: glaciers continue to retreat, and Antarctic sea ice reached the second-lowest extent ever recorded. Meanwhile, extreme weather continues to have devastating consequences around the world," wrote WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo in the introduction to the report, which drew its findings from data drawn from dozens of institutions around the world.
"While a single year above 1.5°C of warming does not indicate that the long-term temperature goals of the Paris agreement are out of reach, it is a wake-up call that we are increasing the risks to our lives, economies and the planet," wrote Saulo.
In 2015, 196 party countries signed on to the agreement to pursue efforts "to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels." According to the United Nations, going above 1.5ºC on an annual or monthly basis doesn't constitute failure to reach the agreement's goal, which refers to temperature rise over decades.
There are multiple methods that aim to measure potential breaches of 1.5°C over the long term, according to the report. The "best estimates" of current global warming based on three different approaches put global temperatures somewhere between 1.34°C and 1.41°C compared to the pre-industrial period.
The report also details the damage brought on by a number of extreme weather events last year, including Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the United States, and Cyclone Chido, which impacted the French territory of Mayotte.
Keep ReadingShow Less
As Planet Heads Toward 2.7°C Rise, Tracker Warns Global Climate Action Has 'Flatlined'
"As the world edges closer to these dangerous climate thresholds, the need for immediate, stronger action to reverse this trend becomes ever more urgent," one report author said.
Nov 14, 2024
Existing policies and actions taken by world governments put the world on track for a median estimate of 2.7°C of warming by the end of the century, Climate Action Tracker revealed on Thursday at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
If global leaders make no further effort to reduce emissions, temperatures have a 33% chance of spiking past 3°C of warming by 2100 and a 10% chance of overtaking 3.6°C, which report lead author Sofia Gonzales-Zuniga called "an absolutely catastrophic level of warming."
"The combined global effect of government action on climate change has flatlined over the last three years, underscoring a critical disconnect between the reality of climate change and the lack of urgency on policies to cut emissions," Climate Action Tracker (CAT) announced during its annual update at COP29.
The report attributes the lack of progress to the fact that few governments announced new climate targets in 2024 while they continued to facilitate the increased burning of fossil fuels, despite the pledge made at last year's COP28 to transition away from oil, gas, and coal.
It comes on the heels of a series of reports released ahead of or during COP29 that paint a consistent picture of escalating greenhouse gas emissions and climate extremes paired with government inaction. The U.N. Emissions Gap Report, published in late October, projected that the world was on track for 3.1°C of warming based on current policies. The World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, also published last month, found that all three main greenhouse gases reached record atmospheric levels in 2023.
"The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked."
2023 was also the hottest year on record, but the WMO's State of the Climate 2024 update for COP29 warned that 2024 was likely to surpass it. Further, global temperatures from January to September averaged 1.54°C above preindustrial levels, temporarily surpassing the 1.5°C warming limit enshrined in the Paris agreement.
"The record-breaking rainfall and flooding, rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones, deadly heat, relentless drought, and raging wildfires that we have seen in different parts of the world this year are unfortunately our new reality and a foretaste of our future," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement. "We urgently need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen our monitoring and understanding of our changing climate."
Yet this is precisely what is not happening: Another study from the Global Carbon Budget released on Wednesday projected that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels would increase by 0.8% from 2023 to reach 37.4 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent, a record high.
"The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked," study leader Pierre Friedlingstein, a professor at Exeter's Global Systems Institute, said in a statement. "Time is running out to meet the Paris agreement goals—and world leaders meeting at COP29 must bring about rapid and deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions to give us a chance of staying well below 2°C warming above preindustrial levels."
The Climate Action Tracker report adds to these findings, concluding that while renewables have surged in recent years, continued reliance on fossil fuels have undermined that progress. While clean energy like wind and solar and clean transit like electric vehicles now receive double the investments of oil, gas, and coal, funding for the latter still ballooned by a factor of four between 2021 and 2022 while fossil fuel subsidies are at a record high.
"We are clearly failing to bend the curve," Gonzales-Zuniga said. "As the world edges closer to these dangerous climate thresholds, the need for immediate, stronger action to reverse this trend becomes ever more urgent."
CAT called on the world's largest emitters to lead the way. It recommended 1.5°C-aligned 2035 targets for the world's seven biggest climate polluters—China, the U.S., India, the E.U., Indonesia, Japan, and Australia—as well as the "troika" countries of Brazil, UAE, and Azerbaijan. To bring its policies in line with the 1.5°C goal, the U.S. would have to cut its total emissions (including from land-use and forests) by 65% of 2005 levels by 2030 and 80% by 2035.
This is unlikely to happen under the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to "drill, baby, drill" as soon as he retakes the White House in January. CAT concluded that Trump's promised energy policies would raise its projection for 2100 temperatures based on current actions by 0.04°C. However, if the U.S. permanently axes its net-zero goals, and if other countries decide to follow Trump's lead, that temperature increase could be higher.
"Clearly, we won't know the full impact of the U.S. elections until President-elect Trump takes office, but there is a clean energy momentum in the U.S. now that will be difficult to stop," Bill Hare, the CEO of Climate Analytics, said in a statement. "While the Trump administration will undoubtedly do its best to throw a wrecking ball into climate action, the clean energy momentum created by President [Joe] Biden, being actioned across the country, is likely to continue at significant scale."
"The key issue is whether countries stick together and continue to move forward with action," Hare concluded. "A Trump rollback of U.S. policies, as damaging as it is, can be overcome."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular