UN: World's glacier mass continues to shrink fast

GENEVA — All 19 of the world's glacier regions experienced a net mass loss in 2024 for the third consecutive year, the United Nations said on Friday, warning that saving the planet's glaciers was now a matter of "survival".

Five of the last six years have seen the most rapid glacier retreat on record, the UN's World Meteorological Organization said on the inaugural World Day for Glaciers.

"Preservation of glaciers is not just an environmental, economic and societal necessity, it's a matter of survival," said WMO chief Celeste Saulo.

Beyond the continental ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, more than 275,000 glaciers worldwide cover approximately 700,000 square kilometers, said the WMO.

But they are rapidly shrinking due to climate change.

Together, they lost 450 billion metric tons of mass, the agency said, citing new data from the Switzerland-based World Glacier Monitoring Service, or WGMS.

It was the fourth worst year on record, with the worst being 2023.

Based on a compilation of worldwide observations, the WGMS estimates that glaciers — separate from the continental ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica — have lost more than 9,000 billion tons since record-keeping began in 1975.

At current rates of melting, many glaciers in western Canada and the United States, Scandinavia, central Europe, the Caucasus, and New Zealand "will not survive the 21st century", said the WMO.

The agency said that together with ice sheets, glaciers store around 70 percent of the world's freshwater resources, with high mountain regions acting like the world's water towers. If they disappear, that would threaten water supplies for millions of people downstream.

Agencies Via Xinhua