humboldt

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 b...