Latest reports show that Venezuela has lost its last remaining glacier after it shrunk so much that scientists reclassified it as an ice field.
Venezuela is currently said to be the first country to have lost all its glaciers in modern times. The country had been home to six glaciers in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida mountain range, which lies at about 5,000m above sea level. Five of the glaciers had disappeared by 2011, leaving just the Humboldt glacier, also known as La Corona, close to the country’s second highest mountain, Pico Humboldt.
According to reports, the Humboldt glacier was projected to last at least another decade, but scientists had been unable to monitor the site for a few years due to political turmoil in the country. Now assessments have found the glacier melted much faster than expected, and had shrunk to an area of less than 2 hectares. As a result, its classification was downgraded from glacier to ice field.
Read also:Death toll from Brazil flooding hits 100
“Other countries lost their glaciers several decades ago after the end of the little ice age but Venezuela is arguably the first one to lose them in modern times,” said Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist and weather historian who maintains a chronicle of extreme temperature records online.
According to Herrera, Indonesia, Mexico and Slovenia are next in line to become glacier-free, with Indonesia’s Papua island and Mexico having experienced record-high warmth in recent months, which is expected to accelerate the glaciers’ retreat.
“The glacier at Humboldt does not have an accumulation zone and is currently only losing surface, with no dynamic of accumulation or expansion,” said Luis Daniel Llambi, an ecologist at Adaptation at Altitude, a programme for climate change adaptation in the Andes.
“Our last expedition to the area was in December 2023 and we did observe that the glacier had lost some 2 hectares from the previous visit in 2019, [down from 4 hectares] to less than 2 hectares now.”
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
