World’s melting ice a hot topic for UN

GENEVA – The United Nations’ weather agency announced on Tuesday that it was making the cryosphere a new top priority, saying the

melting of sea ice, glaciers and permafrost

posed a global threat.

Member states of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) are concerned about the impact of melting ice on sea levels, natural disasters, ecosystems and economies.

“The cryosphere issue is a hot topic not just for the Arctic and Antarctic, but it is a global issue,” said WMO chief Petteri Taalas.

WMO countries meeting in Geneva called for increased funding for more coordinated observations and predictions, and better data exchange, research and services.

Nations far from the polar regions, such as those in the Caribbean and Africa, voiced concerns that changes in the cryosphere would affect the whole planet.

“What happens in polar regions and high mountain regions doesn’t stay in those regions,” said WMO spokesman Clare Nullis.

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

The WMO said that besides implementing the 2015 Paris climate accords and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, better monitoring was needed to track the scale and speed of change.

“You cannot manage what you’re not measuring,” said Ms Nullis. “And we really need to think hard about water resource management.”

Permafrost ‘sleeping giant’

The melting of glaciers and the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets accounts for about 50 per cent of sea-level rise, which is accelerating. This will have growing impact on small island developing states and densely populated coastal areas, said the WMO.

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

Sea ice in Antarctica dropped to 1.92 million sq km in February – the lowest level on record and almost one million sq km below the 1991-2020 mean.

The Arctic permafrost is considered a “sleeping giant” of greenhouse gases, said Ms Nullis, as it stores twice as much carbon as there is in the atmosphere today.

The world’s top meteorologists are meeting in Geneva for the WMO’s congress, a quadrennial meeting of member states that sets the UN agency’s direction and priorities for the next four years. The congress approved a new Global Greenhouse Gas Watch monitoring initiative to fill critical information gaps and provide an integrated framework for space- and surface-based observations.

Professor Taalas said: “Greenhouse gas concentrations are at record levels – in fact, higher than at any time over the last 800,000 years.” Member states are also discussing plans to make sure every country is covered by advance early warning systems for meteorological disasters within five years. AFP