Warning to COP29 from cryosphere scientists as glacier loss hits record highs

“We cannot negotiate with the melting point of ice.”

The annual update, coordinated by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), cautions that current climate commitments, leading the world to well over 2°C of warming, would bring disastrous and irreversible consequences for billions of people from global ice loss.

Over 50 leading cryosphere scientists released their annual report on the status of the world’s ice stores at COP29 in Baku, warning of vastly higher impacts and costs to the global economy given accelerating losses in the world’s cryosphere (snow and ice regions).

Based on the most recent cryosphere science from 2024, the authors underscore that the costs of loss and damage, if our current level of emissions continues and leading towards a rise of 3°C or more, will be even more extreme. Many regions are likely to experience sea-level rise or water resource loss well beyond adaptation limits in this century and mitigation also becomes more costly, due to feedbacks from thawing permafrost emissions and loss of sea ice.

Also for the first time, the Report notes a growing scientific consensus that melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, among other factors, may be slowing important ocean currents at both poles, with potentially dire consequences for a much colder northern Europe, and greater sea-level rise along the U.S. East Coast.

Other new 2024 cryosphere science findings include:

• Glacier ice loss throughout the world hit record highs in some regions, following on two high-loss years in the European Alps.
• The record low Antarctic sea ice records set in 2022-23 appear to be holding, signalling a possible regime change for this important stabiliser of the Antarctic ice sheet.
• Cooling from sea ice, an important “refrigerator” to hold down global temperatures, has decreased dramatically at both poles due to loss of reflective sea ice extent, especially in the Arctic but also around Antarctica.
• Snowpack hit record lows in the Hindu Kush Himalaya, impacting downstream water availability for billions.
• In addition to the loss of Venezuela’s last glacier, the last tropical glacier in Asia, Indonesia’s “Eternity Glacier” appears headed towards demise in the next two years.
• Arctic regions that contain permafrost now appear to be emitting carbon (as carbon dioxide and methane) faster than they can take it up, as more permafrost thaws.
• Both polar oceans are showing growing signs of greater acidification, a direct result of growing CO2 emissions in the atmosphere, with potential long-term damage to regional fisheries such as cod and salmon.

Most of these changes will be irreversible over centuries, or even thousands of years and cryosphere scientists are calling for a ‘mainstreaming’ of cryosphere impacts into the UNFCCC Conference of Parties process. They also stress that only definitive and rapid measures to reduce emissions and halting temperature rise can avert the worst loss and damage impacts of ice and snow loss, and cut the ultimate costs to vulnerable nations and high-emitters alike.

Prof. Helen Findlay, one of nine Scientific Reviewers on Chapter 6: Polar Ocean Acidification, Warming and Freshening and Biological Oceanographer at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, commented:

“As we provide another update, this report highlights that the new science is bringing more certainty to what we already knew or had predicted with models. The oceans connect the cryosphere dynamics; they connect the entire planet and we, humans, are influencing that system, our actions now will determine how the planet functions in the future. The unprecedented warming in the oceans over the past year is of real concern for contributing to sea ice loss – warmer oceans mean it take longer for sea ice to freeze up in the autumn – and glacial melt – we now know that Antarctic glaciers are at risk from warmer ocean waters melting them from underneath. Both of which in turn feedback to ocean circulation – fresher waters are driving a slow-down in the global circulation, which is important for locking away carbon from the surface ocean into the deep ocean (less circulation, less carbon stored), and that influences our climate”.

International Cryosphere Climate Initiative Director, Pam Pearson, said:

“Policymakers cannot afford to ignore the spreading global damage from a warming cryosphere. It has been downplayed in the UN climate negotiations for far too long. We can change this at COP29. With the knowledge that each additional fraction of a degree of warming increases the risks and costs to all nations, now is the time to act. To save the cryosphere is to save ourselves”.