The world is increasingly becoming a glacier graveyard. In a study published at the end of February, scientists from 35 research teams determined that glaciers worldwide have lost an average of 273 billion tons of ice per year since 2000. An “alarming increase” has been recorded over the last ten years.
Michael Zemp, one of the co-leaders of the study, categorized the figure. “The 273 billion tonnes of ice lost annually amounts to what the entire global population consumes in 30 years, assuming three litres per person and day,” said the glaciologist from Switzerland.
The dramatic state of the glaciers can be observed worldwide. For example in the Alps, which scientists predict will be largely free of glaciers by 2100. Or in the polar regions, where temperatures are rising even faster than the global average and where the supposedly “eternal ice” is melting away like an ice ball in a waffle on a hot summer’s day. And also the region around Mount Everest, the highest mountain on earth, is no exception.
British scientific expedition conducts research in the Western Cwm this spring
The snow disappears there even in winter, and the ice retreats even at altitudes above 6,000 meters. According to calculations by US scientists, the South Col of Mount Everest at almost 8,000 meters could be completely ice-free by 2050.
During the climbing season this spring, British scientists want to test their hypothesis in the Western Cwm, the valley above the Khumbu Icefall up to the Lhotse flank. They assume that the intense radiation from the sun into the valley causes the snow to melt even at air temperatures below freezing. According to the scientists, if the meltwater subsequently freezes again, it could possibly warm the snow by several degrees, resulting in glacier ice that is much closer to the melting point than previously realized.
Will the Khumbu Glacier disappear by the middle of the 22nd century?
In 2020, a team of scientists led by British geoscientist Ann Rowan predicted that even “under a moderate warming scenario” of the global climate, the Khumbu Glacier would probably lose 59 percent of its ice volume by 2100 and 94 percent by 2200 – “accompanied by a dynamic shutdown that causes the death of this iconic glacier by 2160 CE,” as the researchers reported at the time.
The hundreds of climbers attempting Everest this year and the Icefall Doctors will also be able to observe the changing conditions on the mountain: More bare ice on the route, thus an increased risk of rock fall, increasingly larger crevasses in the Khumbu Icefall. But these are rather luxury problems compared to the effects of glacier retreat on the mountain peoples in the Himalayas or elsewhere in the world.
On the occasion of today’s first “World Day for Glaciers”, the United Nations warns: “Rising global temperatures are causing glaciers to retreat at an alarming rate, leading to water scarcity, rising sea levels, and increasing the chances of natural disasters like floods or landslides.”
People in the Everest region got a foretaste of this in August 2024, when the natural dam of a glacial lake burst and the masses of water and mud devastated a large part of the mountaineer’s village of Thame.
