Venezuela lost its last glacier this year. The Greenland ice sheet loses an average of 30 million tons of ice per hour. Ice loss from the Thwaites Glacier, also known as the “Doomsday” Glacier because its collapse could cause a rapid loss of ice in Antarctica, may be unstoppable.
These are just some of the grim findings from more than fifty leading snow and ice scientists, detailed in a new report from the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative.
The report summarizes the state of snow and ice in 2024: In short, experts agree that it has been a terrible year for the frozen parts of the Earth, an expected result of global warming. In addition, top cryosphere scientists are increasingly concerned that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a major ocean current that controls heat cycles in the Atlantic Ocean, is on its way to collapse.
A rapid cessation of the current would cause rapid cooling of the North Atlantic Ocean, warming of the Southern Hemisphere and extreme changes in precipitation. If that happens, the new report suggests, Northern Europe could cool by about 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit within a decade.
The report highlights a shift in consensus: Scientists once thought that tipping points – such as the collapse of AMOC – were distant or distant possibilities. Now it seems more likely that some of these thresholds will be crossed, and there will be fewer opportunities to turn the situation around.
“The latest science doesn’t necessarily tell us that things are different from what we knew before, but tells us with greater confidence and certainty that these things are more likely to happen,” said Helen Findlay, an author of the report. and a professor and biological oceanographer at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in England. “The longer we record these things, and the longer we can observe them and start to understand and monitor them, there’s more certainty in the system and we start to really understand how these tipping points work.”
Last month, 44 leading scientists wrote this in an open letter to the leaders of the Scandinavian countries the collapse of AMOC remained “highly uncertainBut the evidence in favor of such a collapse was mounting and the risks were underestimated. Dramatic changes to the AMOC, they warned, would “likely lead to unprecedented extreme weather” and “potentially threaten the viability of agriculture in northwestern Europe.”
The new report similarly draws attention to the risk of AMOC collapse.
Furthermore, it is predicted that roughly two-thirds of the glacial ice in the European Alps will be lost by 2050 if global greenhouse gas emissions continue at the same rate. It is estimated that ten million people are already at risk of flooding from glaciers in Iceland, Alaska and Asia – a phenomenon that is already occurring as meltwater collapses ice dams and quickly overflows downstream. If high emissions continue, the report adds, models suggest sea levels could rise by about 3 meters in the 2100s, endangering parts of many coastal cities.
The report was released as world leaders gathered Monday in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, for the United Nations COP29 climate conference.
“Timing is everything,” says Julie Brigham-Grette, professor of geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of the new report.
She said the group hopes to highlight world leaders: “The sense of urgency couldn’t be greater. We’ve been talking about urgency for ten years. It almost starts to feel like a useless word. What’s more than ‘urgent?’ ‘Catastrophic?’ We have run out of ways to describe it.”
To date, the report says, the world’s governments are falling short of the pledges they made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of the Paris Agreement.
Even if on track, these commitments are insufficient to achieve global climate goals, the authors say. On paper, the world’s pledges would limit the increase in global temperatures this century to about 2.3 degrees Celsius (4.1 degrees Fahrenheit). That is far from the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Global temperatures are currently on track to rise more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) on average.
“I’m feeling pretty frustrated,” Findlay said. “I don’t really understand how they are overlooking the seriousness of the problem.”
On Monday in Baku, world leaders agreed to new rules for a global carbon credit trading market. In a press release, COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev, who has been Azerbaijan’s minister of ecology and natural resources since 2018, said the agreement is a “game-changing” instrument to channel climate finance to developing countries.
But he also acknowledged in a speech to delegates that the world is “heading towards destruction” under current climate policies.
That warning and the new report both come amid fears that the US will backtrack on its climate commitments and withdraw from the Paris Agreement after Donald Trump comes to power in January. Trump wants to remove the US from the international treaty, and he started that process during his first presidential administration. President Joe Biden reversed this move in 2021.
Peter Neff, a glaciologist and climate scientist at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the new report, said the authors clearly conveyed the scientific consensus.
“It’s nothing surprising for a glaciologist. There is no good news across the board regarding ice on Earth. For the most part, it’s all going in one direction,” Neff said.
But he added that he still found the report’s findings disturbing: “These documents can hit you like a ton of bricks, and that’s intentional.”
This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:
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