Venezuela is the first nation in the world to declare its glaciers extinct

Venezuela's Humboldt Glacier, also known as "the Crown", has melted much faster than expected.Scientists have reclassified it as ice field, or snowfield, probably making Venezuela the first country in the world to have lost all its glaciers in modern times.Until 2011, the country was home to six in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida mountain range:five melted that year, leaving only the Humboldt glacier alive, located near the second highest mountain in the country, Pico Humboldt.Now, this too is gone forever.

According to forecasts the glacier – which is past to have 337 hectares of ice in 1910 to 4 hectares in 2022 – was supposed to last at least another decade, but melted away much faster than expected, shrinking to an area of ​​less than 2 hectares.It is currently only losing surface area, without any longer recording any accumulation zones or expansion dynamics.For this reason it was reclassified as a snowfield.The proposal made a few months ago by the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, to cover the glacier with geotextile sheets to try to slow down its melting was useless or certainly late.“Other countries lost their glaciers several decades ago, after the end of the Little Ice Age, but Venezuela is probably the first to lose them in modern times,” said Maximiliano Herrera, climatologist and weather historian, in The Guardian. Second Herrera, Indonesia, Mexico and Slovenia could be next Countries to remain without glaciers.“In the Andean area of ​​Venezuela, there have been some months with monthly anomalies of +3°C/+4°C above the 1991-2020 average, which is exceptional in those tropical latitudes,” Herrera said again.The El Niño climate phenomenon, which is affecting much of the world and leading to increasingly warmer temperatures, may, according to experts, accelerate the disappearance of tropical glaciers.

“The loss of Humboldt Glacier marks the loss of much more than the ice itself, including the many ecosystem services that glaciers provide, from unique microbial habitats to environments of significant cultural value,” he said. declared Caroline Clason, glaciologist at the University of Durham.“The fact that Venezuela has lost all of its glaciers really symbolizes the changes we can expect to see throughout our global cryosphere under continued climate change.”The loss of glaciers, which has been announced for some time, will bring about many changes to our planet.These ice fields are essential for the balance of the global water cycle.They help regulate the climate and give life to unique ecosystems in the world;they are used for agriculture, livestock farming and even the production of electricity, as well as being an integral part of culture and cosmovision of numerous Andean populations.Immense reserves of drinking water are essential for the survival of millions of people and animals.The consequences of their disappearance risk being devastating for the balance of the entire globe.According to data from WWF, in solo 2022 the glaciers have lost almost 3000 million cubic meters of ice, which correspond to over 6% of the residual volume.Together with those of 2003 and 2011, this is one of the worst retreats of the last hundred years.

Alpine glaciers they are not in a much better situation, having shrunk by about 60% from 1850 to the present.Second a study published in the summer of 2022, Swiss glaciers lost half of their volume between 1931 and 2016 and a further 12% between 2016 and 2021.Second GLAMOS, the Swiss glacier measurement network, in the hydrological year 2022-2023 the loss of glacial mass was 4% and the melting observed in the last two years was equal to that recorded between 1960 and 1990, i.e. in 30 years.Even the glaciers of northern Greenland are "dying":in 45 years they have lost 45% of their surface area, and continue to retreat.Three of them have already completely disbanded around the 2000s.If the trend continues at this frighteningly rapid pace, by 2100 there will probably be almost no glaciers left on the planet.

[by Monica Cillerai]