Four years ago, in 2020, a team of researchers published a study concluding that Venezuela is set to become the first country to lose all its glaciers due to climate change. Even earlier, scientists had issued the same warning. Now, it seems to have become true, as the last of Venezuela’s large ice mass is probably too small to be called a glacier.
“In Venezuela, there are no more glaciers,” Julio Cesar Centeno, a university professor and advisor to the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), told AFP. “What we have is a piece of ice that is 0.4 percent of its original size.”
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Melting up the glaciers
Venezuela’s geography is closely linked to the Andes Mountains. These mountains significantly influence local weather patterns, creating varied microclimates ranging from humid and lush to dry and cold. Venezuela’s mountains are pretty high — Pico Bolívar (4,978 meters or 16,332 ft) is the highest point, but several other mountains lie at over 4,000 meters altitude.
Some of these mountains hosted glaciers. Just in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida mountain range, Venezuela had six glaciers. Five of them were gone by 2011, leaving just the Humboldt glacier standing. Overall, glacier coverage in Venezuela has declined by a staggering 98% between 1953 and 2019.
Now, Humboldt (also called La Corona) is too small to be considered a glacier, according to The International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), a scientific advocacy organization.
Losing glacier status
There’s no “official” definition of what a glacier is, but the decrease of Humboldt has been stunning. The glacier has shrunk from 450 hectares to just two.
There’s no global standard for how large a glacier should be to qualify as one, but according to the USGS, a commonly accepted figure is 10 hectares. Another commonly accepted definition is that a glacier moves and deforms under its own weight. In practice, most ice masses around 10 hectares also don’t move under their weight, and Humboldt doesn’t.
Professor Mark Maslin, a professor of earth system sciences at University College London, told the BBC that Humboldt is definitely not a glacier.
“Glaciers are ice that fills valleys – that’s the definition – and therefore I would say Venezuela has no glaciers whatsoever,” he told the BBC.
So Venezuela has lost its last glacier and has now officially become glacier-less. The “eternal snows” of Venezuela are no more. It’s the first country to do so as a result of man-made climate change.
“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 chronicles extreme temperature records on Twitter.
More countries to come
Venezuela isn’t an exception. Global temperatures have increased by an average of 0.11° Fahrenheit (0.06° Celsius) per decade since 1850, when the Industrial Revolution started. In recent years, as our greenhouse gas emissions have grown, this temperature increase has also accelerated. The rate of warming since the 1980s is over three times faster than the average.
This means that more countries are set to lose their glaciers. According to Herrera, Indonesia, Mexico, and Slovenia are next in line to become glacier-free. Meanwhile, Indonesia and Mexico are also experiencing record-high heat that will accelerate the glaciers’ retreat. La Corona’s history seems to be a mirror of what will happen in other parts of the world as temperatures continue to increase.
“This is an extremely sad record for our country, but also a unique moment in our history, providing an opportunity to [not only] communicate the reality and immediacy of climate change impacts, but also to study the colonization of life under extreme conditions and the changes that climate change brings to high mountain ecosystems,” said Luis Daniel Llambi, an ecologist at Adaptation at Altitude, a program for climate change adaptation in the Andes, for The Guardian.
Can the glacier be saved?
As long as global temperatures continue to increase, glaciers all around the world (not just in Venezuela) will continue to be in trouble. However some approaches can provide local benefits.
For instance, in December, the Venezuelan government announced plans to slow down and hopefully even reverse the thaw by coating parts of the glacier with a thermal mesh that reflects the Sun’s heat. The cover consists of 35 separate pieces measuring 2.75 by 80 meters, which were brought in by helicopter. A similar approach is used in several European countries, particularly to protect ski slopes from melting.
“It allows us to maintain the temperature of the area and prevent the entire glacier from melting,” said Jehyson Guzman, governor of the western state of Merida which used to be home to Venezuela’s glaciers.
But critics of the plan say this is too little too late. Some researchers including Centeno have even challenged the plan as having a negative impact, as the blanket can degrade and break into smaller pieces of plastic (microplastics) that will pollute the environment.
A major consequence of climate change
The loss of glaciers is a major environmental and socio-economic problem globally.
Regions dependent on glacial meltwater for irrigation, such as South America and Central Asia, face challenges as diminishing glaciers reduce water runoff, crucial for agriculture and drinking supplies. This reduction also impacts hydropower production in places like Norway, the Alps, and the Pacific Northwest of North America.
Ecologically, decreased glacier-fed runoff threatens cold-water habitats vital for species like salmon and cutthroat trout, potentially disrupting their survival and reproduction. Moreover, changes in glacier melt patterns could alter ocean currents and the thermohaline circulation, affecting marine ecosystems and fisheries that are essential for human livelihoods.
Deglaciation can occur naturally, but the current accelerated retreat of glaciers is primarily driven by man-made climate change, linked to increased atmospheric greenhouse gases. Normally, glaciers advance when accumulation of frozen precipitation exceeds ice loss; however, due to climate change, many glaciers are experiencing negative mass balances—where ice loss outpaces accumulation—leading to continuous retreat.
By 2100, the forecast for glaciers under current climate change scenarios is largely pessimistic. Most glaciers around the world are expected to continue retreating at an accelerated pace. Studies suggest significant reductions in glacier volume, with some models predicting that many of the world’s smaller glaciers will disappear entirely.
Major glacier systems in regions like the Himalayas, the Alps, and North America might lose over 80% of their current mass, drastically affecting water availability for billions of people, altering river ecosystems, and increasing sea levels.
The situation in Venezuela is merely an alarm bell for a much greater problem. This extensive glacier loss underscores the urgent need for robust climate action to reduce emissions and curb global heating.
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