UN agency concerned over Earth’s melting ice

By Zeus Legaspi

Delegates from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) expressed concern about the impacts of diminishing sea ice and melting glaciers on sea level rise.

WMO chief Petteri Taalas called the cryosphere issue a “hot topic not just for the Arctic and Antarctic,” as the world’s melting ice continues to pose a global threat.

“What happens in polar regions and high mountain regions doesn’t stay in those regions,” WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis told reporters on Tuesday, May 30.

Retreating glaciers affects people’s adaptation strategies and access to water resources, WMO said in a statement on Monday.

“More than a billion people rely on water from snow and glaciers melt which is carried by the major rivers of the world. When those glaciers retreat…you need to think what is going to happen to the water security of those people,” Nullis added.

As a response, WMO member states called for increased funding for more coordinated observations and predictions, and better data exchange, research, and services, because “you cannot manage what you are not measuring,” the agency’s spokeswoman said.

Accelerated melting

WMO detailed that ice sheet melt in Greenland and Antarctica is accelerating and is having “growing and cascading impacts on small island developing states and densely populated coastal areas.”

The UN weather agency called the Arctic permafrost a “sleeping giant” of greenhouse gases, storing twice as much carbon as in the atmosphere at present.

“Thawing mountains and Arctic permafrost create an increased risk of natural cascading hazards,” WMO said in a statement.

“Cryosphere changes in mountain areas are leading to an increased risk of hazards such as rockslides, glacier detachments, and floods,” the agency added.

Rapid acceleration of thawing was recorded in the European Alps, smashing records for glacier melt due to a combination of little winter snow, an intrusion of Saharan dust, and heatwaves between May and early September last year.

The Greenland Ice Sheet ended with a negative total mass balance for the 26th year in a row.

Amidst this, the global mean sea level continues to reach new record highs. It doubled between the first decade of the satellite record, from 2.27 millimeters per year from 1993 to 2002, to 4.6 millimeters per year from 2013 to 2022.