Annual update on the state of world’s ice stores warns of drastically higher costs without immediate emissions reductions.
Over 50 leading cryosphere scientists released their annual report on the status of the world’s ice stores today 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).
The State of the Cryosphere Report 2024, coordinated by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI) warns 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.
Based on the most recent cryosphere science updates from 2024, the authors underscore that the costs of loss and damage if our current level of emissions continues – leading towards a rise of 3°C or more – will be even more extreme, with many regions experiencing sea-level rise or water resource loss well beyond adaptation limits in this century. Mitigation also becomes more costly, due to feedbacks from thawing permafrost emissions and loss of sea ice.
For the first time also, 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 especially.
- 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.
Irreversible changes over centuries, or even thousands of years
State of the Cryosphere Report 2024 notes that the longer the global temperature stays 1.5°C higher than pre-industrial levels, and the higher the peak temperature, the greater the risk of crossing tipping points for the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, many land glaciers and AMOC. Permafrost thaw increases with every fraction of warming, with no sudden “tipping point” – and no “safety margin.” And each rise in atmospheric CO2 increases the acidification of the polar oceans, at rates far higher
than elsewhere.
Despite all countries’ pledges, the Report notes that concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is still increasing, twice exceeding 428ppm in 2024. If it continues to rise at today’s pace, global temperatures will rise by at least 3°C by the end of this century, well within the lifetime of people born today.
The publication of the State of the Cryosphere Report 2024 comes as global leaders gather in Baku, Azerbaijan for a Climate Leaders Action Summit in conjunction with the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP29), and as the world’s governments prepare to update their climate pledges (NDCs) to the UN early in 2025.
The COP29 host is itself vulnerable to climate change impacts, with capital Baku reliant on snowpack or glaciers for 26% of its water supply, according to local mountain scientists, underscoring the need for climate action.
The cryosphere scientists are advocating for a mainstreaming of cryosphere impacts into the UNFCCC process, through more attention to its global impacts with overshoot of 1.5°C. As in the past two COPs, polar, mountain, downstream and low-lying nations comprising the Ambition on Melting Ice (AMI) High-level Group will gather next week to raise awareness among fellow leaders of the far-higher costs of mitigation delay.
Cryosphere scientists (ICCI) stress that only definitive and rapid measures to reduce emissions and halt overshoot 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.
“The drastic changes we are seeing in the cryosphere while mountain and downstream regions all over the planet are suffering floods, droughts, and landslides provide the most compelling arguments we could have for immediate climate action”, said Regine Hock, an IPCC author and glaciologist. “The cryosphere can’t wait. It must be put at the top of the global climate agenda.”
“The impacts of cryosphere loss are already felt by millions”
“The Greenland Ice Sheet is currently losing 30 million tons of ice per hour, something I never thought I would see in my lifetime,” said IPCC scientist Dr. Rob DeConto, who speaks at a COP29 event today. “But Antarctica represents the real long-term threat, and if climate pledges are not taken seriously, global temperature rise may exceed 3°C, with Antarctic ice loss potentially causing sea levels to rise much faster than we think.”
“Without urgent climate action, it will be impossible for coastal cities and regions to adapt in time,” says Dr. James Kirkham, Chief Scientist to AMI and an author on the Report. “We are not talking about the distant future: the impacts of cryosphere loss are already felt by millions. But the speed of action we take today decides the size and speed of the challenge to which future generations will need to adapt. The impacts of cryosphere loss will only become greater with every hour that leaders
delay action now.”
“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”, concluded ICCI Director Pam Pearson.
International Cryosphere Climate Initiative
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