If you think that climate change is a problem of the future, think again. Venezuela, for instance, has likely become the first country — it certainly won’t be the last — in modern history to lose all its glaciers. This comes after scientists reclassified the Humboldt glacier, Venezuela’s last remaining glacier, as an ice field earlier this month. Venezuela used to be home to six glaciers, located at about 5,000 metres above sea level in the Andes mountains. By 2011, five of them had vanished. Scientists expected the Humboldt glacier to last another decade. But it melted at a faster rate than expected, and has shrunk to an area of less than 2 hectares, leading to its downgrade from a glacier to an ice field. Much like the Humboldt glacier, other glaciers across the world are shrinking and disappearing faster than researchers thought, with two-thirds of them projected to melt out of existence by 2100 at current climate change trends, according to a 2023 study. Here is a look at what glaciers are, why they are disappearing, and what can be the impact of their disappearance. What are glaciers? Glaciers are essentially large and thick masses of ice that are formed on land due to the accumulation of snow over centuries. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), they usually exist and form in areas where mean annual temperatures reach near the freezing point; winter precipitation leads to significant snow accumulations; and temperatures throughout the remaining year do not cause the complete loss of the previous winter’s snow accumulation. Due to their sheer mass and gravity, glaciers tend to flow like very slow rivers. Although there is no universal consensus on how large a mass of ice has to be to qualify as a glacier, the USGS says a commonly accepted guideline is around 10 hectares. Why are glaciers disappearing? The reason is quite obvious — it is global warming. Like an ice cube melts when exposed to heat, glaciers are melting due to warmer temperatures. And what is causing these warmer temperatures? It is the greenhouse gases (GHGs). Since the Industrial Revolution kicked off in the 18th Century, human activities such as burning fossil fuels have been releasing GHGs like carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. These invisible gases trap heat — they allow sunlight to pass through the atmosphere but prevent the heat that sunlight brings from returning into space — leading to a rise in global temperatures. In recent decades, the emission of GHGs has skyrocketed, which has resulted in the global average temperature to increase by at least 1.1 degree Celsius since 1880. The temperature rise may seem small but it has had devastating consequences. For instance, more frequent and intense heatwaves, floods, droughts, rise in sea level and — the subject of this explainer — glacier melting. The Andes — a mountain range running through parts of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela — has witnessed a temperature increase of a high rate of 0.10 degree Celsius in the past seven decades. That is one of the major reasons why Venezuela has lost all of its glaciers. In the case of the Humboldt glacier, the melting was accelerated by El Niño, which developed in July 2023. El Niño refers to an abnormal warming of surface waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean and leads to warmer temperatures. “In the Andean area of Venezuela, there have been some months with monthly anomalies of +3C/+4C above the 1991-2020 average, which is exceptional at those tropical latitudes,” Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist and weather historian, told The Guardian. India is also at the risk of losing its glaciers. They are melting at unprecedented rates across the Hindu Kush Himalayan mountain ranges and could lose up to 80% of their volume this century if GHG emissions are not drastically reduced, according to a 2023 report. What are the impacts of glacier loss? Glaciers are a crucial source of freshwater, especially during hot, dry periods, for local communities, plants, and animals. Their disappearance would mean that one would have to be entirely dependent on spot rainfall for freshwater. The cold water that runs off glaciers keeps downstream water temperatures cooler. This is crucial for many aquatic species in the region as they need cold water temperatures to survive, according to USGS. Glacier loss directly impacts such species, which are an essential part of the food web. Melting glaciers can also contribute to the rise in sea level. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets — they are also considered as glaciers — are the largest contributors to global sea level rise. Experts suggest that Venezuela's Humboldt glacier did not have enough ice to substantially raise sea levels. For the South American country, however, the biggest impact of losing all of its glaciers will be cultural, Luis Daniel Llambi, an ecologist, told The Guardian. “Glaciers were a part of the region’s cultural identity, and for mountaineering and touristic activities,” he said.
