Global alert: Glaciers have never lost as much ice as they have now.

BarcelonaBetween 2022 and 2024, the largest loss of glacial mass ever recorded occurred. Glaciers are disappearing around the world at a very alarming rate. and, according to reports from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS), the so-called perpetual ice In many regions, it will disappear completely before the end of the 21st century. This will lead to a "cascade of knock-on effects," warns the WMO.

According to a study published in the magazine Nature coordinated by the WGMS, the planet's glaciers have lost 5% of their volume on a global scale in the last 24 years. The research – called GlaMBIE– highlights that some regions have lost 2%, such as the Antarctic islands, but others have seen the figure reach almost 40%. These latter are the glaciers of central Europe: the Alps and the Pyrenees. In fact, in the Catalan mountains, practically all the permafrost has already melted. In the last 175 years, the mountain range has lost 95% of its ice.

The same report, based on data from 35 different research teams, observed 19 regions from 2000 to 2023. The findings estimate that the world's glaciers are losing 273 billion tons of ice annually, an amount equivalent to the water consumption of the entire global population for 30 years. This situation has worsened in recent years: the amount of ice that has melted has increased by 36% between 2012 and 2023 compared to the initial years of the study, between 2000 and 2011.

To highlight the vital role of glaciers in the planet's climate system, 2025 has also been declared the International Year of Glacier Conservation. "Their conservation is a matter of survival," said Celeste Saulo, Secretary-General of the WMO.

The World Glacier Monitoring Service says ice caps (there are more than 275,000 on the planet) have lost more than 9 trillion tonnes since records began in 1975. This is equivalent to a block of ice the size of 5 Michael Zemps.

The Glaciers are clear indicators of how rapidly climate change is progressing.Their melting has a significant impact on ecosystems and, above all, on water reserves, as they are an integral component of the Earth's hydrological system. Glaciers in both Greenland and Antarctica, in particular, directly impact sea level. For this reason, they must be monitored to determine the approximate water resources the Earth will have in the coming years and how serious the situation is.

The year 2024 was the third consecutive hydrological year in which the 19 glacial regions experienced a net loss of mass. This figure was relatively moderate in the Canadian Arctic and on the periphery of Greenland, but glaciers in Scandinavia, Svalbard, and northern Asia experienced the largest annual loss of mass ever recorded. If melting continues at its current rate, many glaciers in western Canada and the United States, as well as in Scandinavia, Central Europe, the Caucasus, New Zealand, and the tropics, will disappear before the end of the century.