by For the people of the Venezuelan state of Mérida, the glaciated peaks of the Sierra Nevada have been a source of pride since time immemorial: The mountains are part of the regional identity and the origin of various legends in the area related to them white mythical. eagle.
However, none of the six glaciers that crown the mountains remain.
The International Climate and Cryosphere Initiative (ICCI), a science advocacy organization, recently announced that the Humboldt Glacier – also known as La Corona, or “the crown” in Spanish – is already “too small to be classified as a glacier”. In March, Venezuelan scientists warned that the glacier had shrunk significantly.
“Our tropical glaciers started to disappear from the ’70s and their absence is felt. It is very sad and the only thing we can do is to use their legacy to show children how beautiful our Sierra Nevada was,” Alejandra Melfo, an astrophysicist at the Universidad de los Andes in Mérida, said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo.
Venezuela had six glaciers in the Sierra Nevada, located about 16,000 feet above sea level. By 2011, five were already gone, but the Humboldt Glacier located next to the country’s second highest mountain, Humboldt Peak, resisted the onslaught of time. Scientists believe that its disappearance makes Venezuela the first country in the Americas – and the first country in modern history – to lose all its glaciers.
Glaciers are large masses of ice formed by the accumulation of snow over hundreds of years. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), they typically occur when average annual temperatures reach near-freezing levels and winter precipitation causes significant accumulated snow.
An important aspect of glacier development is that temperatures during the rest of the year should not cause the total loss of snow of the previous winter, this is how glaciers are maintained and how they grow. And that is what failed in the case of Humboldt.
“In the case of the Humboldt, it’s an erosion process that has been going on for years without stopping,” Melfo said.
With the increase in global temperature due to climate change, the melting of large ice masses is an ongoing phenomenon that contributes, among other things, to rising 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 disappeared,” said Maximiliano Bezada, a geological researcher at the University of Minnesota. “Humboldt’s case was iconic because it’s at 4,800 meters and yet it stayed for a long time, and that’s a climate anomaly.”
Although the Humboldt Glacier was expected to last at least another decade, scientists were unable to monitor the area where it is located due to the country’s political turmoil.
“Venezuelan’s glaciers are not the first to disappear, some have disappeared in Colombia and other countries. What happens is that Venezuela did not have much in the Sierra Nevada, I saw how the Pico La Concha and Pico Bolívar glaciers disappeared. That is why it is the first country to run out of glaciers,” said Melfo.
‘Effects of higher temperatures’
Because of their large mass, glaciers tend to flow like very slow rivers. While there is no universal consensus on how large an ice mass must be considered a glacier, the USGS says that about 25 acres is the commonly accepted standard.
The case of the Humboldt glacier is not the only one. Glaciers around the world are shrinking, and some are disappearing faster according to scientific projections. A 2023 study analyzed the planet’s 215,000 land glaciers more comprehensively than previous research and concluded that if temperatures continue to rise, 83% of the world’s glaciers will be gone by the year 2100.
“Although the end of the glacier was something that had to happen because of the cycle we have, there is no doubt that global warming, a product of greenhouse gases, has accelerated the process of course,” a Bezada said.
Between 1952 and 2019 alone, the surface of the Venezuelan glacier went from 2,317 square kilometers to just 0.046 square kilometers, according to a 2020 study.
“There are several projects that monitor change in the Sierra Nevada with temperature sensors placed in the ground and measured every six months. The evidence of warming also shows that the plants that grow there are changing because the climate change has already been felt in the peaks of the Andes,” said Melfo.
Researchers believe that the climate phenomenon El Niño influenced the melting of the Humboldt Glacier, because it leads to warmer temperatures that accelerate the disappearance of tropical glaciers.
“The speed at which glaciers are melting is evidence of climate change. However, this is not new. Glaciers started to disappear a long time ago, but the speed has changed due to high temperatures,” said Melfo. “Outside the glaciers, we see rapid changes in the composition of species, plants and animals, and this is recorded. Denying climate change is very dangerous for everyone.”
The Andes region – a mountain range that runs through parts of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and of Venezuela – for the past seven years. For some scientists, that is one of the main reasons why Venezuela lost all its glaciers.
“In the Andean zone of Venezuela, there were several months with above-average monthly anomalies, which is exceptional in those tropical latitudes,” said Maximiliano Herrera, climatologist and weather historian.
However, the melting of the glacier is also an opportunity for further study. Melfo said that the end of the glacier in Venezuela starts a new process in the area and an event that must be investigated.
“Life begins by rising and colonizing the rock. First come the lichens, then the mosses form the soil, organic matter is created and conditions are created for the plants to reach, and then the animals come. This is how an ecosystem is put together ; it’s called primary succession and it’s a unique process,” she said.
Meanwhile, the little ice left on Humboldt will continue to melt. Residents of Mérida, including Melfo, say that the glacier will continue to exist as long as the white vests can be seen from the city – something that has stopped happening with the other glaciers.
“For the people of Mérida, perhaps the most amazing glacier is Pico Bolívar, which has been a remnant of a glacier since 2012. However, people continued to say it was a glacier until the last piece of ice visible from the city disappeared in 2020,” Melfo said. “I think the same thing is going to happen with the Humboldt: until the last piece is gone, we’ll continue to say it’s a glacier.”
An earlier version of this story was first published in Notiias Telemundo.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
