Venezuela may be the first nation in modern history to lose all its glaciers, the BBC reported. Taking to X (formerly Twitter), scientific advocacy organisation The International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICC), said that the South American nation's only remaining glacier - the Humboldt, or La Corona, in the Andes - had become "too small to be classed as a glacier". "This makes Venezuela the first country in the Andes mountain range to lose all its glaciers," the organisation added.
"There has not been much ice cover on the last Venezuelan glacier since the 2000s," Dr Caroline Clason, a glaciologist at Durham University, said as per the BBC. "Now it's not being added to, so it has been reclassified as an ice field," she added.
Notably, Venezuela has already lost at least six other glaciers in the last century and in March, Venezuelan scientists warned that the Humboldt Glacier had dramatically shrunk. Back then the glacier had shrunk from 450 hectares to just two. Now, according to experts, it has shrunk to less than that.
Glaciers are large masses of ice that have formed due to the accumulation of snow over centuries. According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), they typically exist where average annual temperatures reach near-freezing levels and winter precipitation causes significant accumulations of snow. An important aspect of glacier development is that temperatures during the rest of the year should not cause the complete loss of the previous winter's snow accumulation, this is how glaciers are maintained and how they grow.
This is what failed in the Humboldt case. "In the case of the Humboldt, it's a process of erosion that has been going on for years without stopping," Alejandra Melfo, an astrophysicist at the Universidad de los Andes in Merida, explained per NBC News.
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Separately, Maximiliano Bezada, a geological researcher at the University of Minnesota, explained that with the increase in global temperatures due to climate change, the melting of large ice masses is a continuous phenomenon that, among other things, contributes to raising sea levels around the world.
"It is the end of a glacial cycle. And in the intertropical zones, basically below 5,000 meters, almost all the glaciers have been disappearing," Mr Bezada said, adding that "The case of Humboldt was iconic because it is at 4,800 meters and yet it remained for quite a long time, and that is a climatic anomaly."
Notably, according to NBC News, the case of the Humboldt Glacier is not the only one. Glaciers across the globe are shrinking, and some are disappearing faster than what experts predicted.
However, the melting of the glacier is also an opportunity for further study, as per experts. Mr Melfo said that the end of the glacier in Venezuela marks the beginning of a new process in the area and an event that will have to be investigated.
