For the people of the Venezuelan state of Mérida, the glacier-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada have been a source of pride since time immemorial: The mountains are part of the regional identity and the source of various legends in the region that link them with the legendary whites. eagles
But none of the six glaciers that crowned 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 was shrinking significantly.
“Our tropical glaciers have been disappearing since the 70s, and their absence is felt. It’s a great sadness, and all we can do is use their legacy to show children how beautiful our Sierra Nevada is,” said astrophysicist Alejandra Melfo. Universidad de los Andes in Mérida, Noticias said in an interview with Telemundo.
Venezuela had six glaciers in the Sierra Nevada, about 16,000 feet above sea level. By 2011, five of them had already disappeared, but the Humboldt Glacier, located near Humboldt Peak, the country’s second-highest mountain, withstood the bad weather. Scientists believe that the disappearance of glaciers makes Venezuela the first country in the Americas to lose all its glaciers, and the first country in modern history.
Glaciers are large masses of ice that form due to snow accumulation over centuries. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), they are often found in places where average annual temperatures reach levels near freezing and winter precipitation causes significant snow accumulation.
An important aspect of glacier development is that temperatures during the rest of the year should not cause the previous winter’s snow accumulation to disappear completely; This shows how glaciers are maintained and how they grow. That’s what failed in the Humboldt case.
“In the Humboldt case, this is a process of erosion that has been going on steadily for years,” Melfo said.
The melting of large ice masses as global temperatures increase due to climate change is a constant phenomenon that contributes, among other things, to rising sea levels around the world.
“This is the end of a glacial cycle. And in the intertropical regions below 5,000 meters, almost all glaciers are disappearing,” said Maximiliano Bezada, a geology researcher at the University of Minnesota. “The Humboldt case was iconic because even though it was at 4,800 metres, it stayed there for quite a long time, and that’s a climatic anomaly.”
Although the Humboldt Glacier was expected to last at least another ten years, scientists could not monitor its area due to political turmoil in the country.
“Venezuela’s glaciers are not the first to disappear; some have become extinct in Colombia and other countries. What happened is that there are very few of them in the Sierra Nevada of Venezuela, I saw how the Pico La Concha and Pico Bolivar glaciers disappeared. That’s why this is the first country to run out of glaciers,” Melfo said.
‘Consequences of high 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 to be considered a glacier, the USGS states that the commonly accepted standard is approximately 25 acres.
The Humboldt Glacier case is not the only one. Glaciers around the world are shrinking and some are disappearing faster, contrary to scientific predictions. A 2023 study analyzed the planet’s 215,000 land glaciers more thoroughly than previous studies and concluded that 83% of the world’s glaciers will disappear by 2100 if temperatures continue to rise.
“While the end of the glacier is something that will happen because of the cycle we live in, there is no doubt that global warming, which is a product of greenhouse gases, is of course accelerating the extinction process,” Bezada said.
According to a 2020 study, between 1952 and 2019 alone, Venezuela’s glacier surface increased from 2,317 square kilometers to just 0.046 square kilometers.
“There are several projects in the Sierra Nevada that monitor change with temperature sensors buried in the ground, measured every six months. The evidence shows warming, plus the plants growing there are changing because climate change is already being felt in the peaks of the Andes,” Melfo said.
Researchers believe that the El Niño climate phenomenon affects the melting of the Humboldt Glacier because it causes warmer temperatures that accelerate the disappearance of tropical glaciers.
“The rate of melting of glaciers is evidence of climate change. However, this is not new. Glaciers began to disappear a long time ago, but their speed changed due to high temperatures,” said Melfo. “Beyond the glaciers, we see rapid changes in the composition of species, plants and animals, and this is recorded. Denying climate change “It’s become a very dangerous thing for everyone.”
The Andes region, a mountain range that runs through parts of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, has seen a temperature increase of at least 0.10 degrees Celsius over the past seven decades. According to many scientists, this is one of the main reasons why Venezuela lost all its glaciers.
“In the Andean region of Venezuela, there have been several months with above-average monthly anomalies, which is an exceptional situation in tropical latitudes,” said climatologist and weather historian Maximiliano Herrera.
However, the melting of the glacier is also an opportunity for further studies. Melfo said that the end of the glacier in Venezuela indicates the beginning of a new process in the region and is an event that needs to be investigated.
“Life starts to rise up and colonize the rocks. First the lichens come, then the mosses form the soil, organic matter builds, which creates the conditions for the plants to come, and then the animals come. So an ecosystem is formed; this is called primary succession, and it’s a unique process,” he said. .
Meanwhile, the small amount of ice remaining in Humboldt will continue to melt. Mérida residents, including Melfo, say the glacier will continue to exist as long as the white remnants now seen on other glaciers can be seen from the city.
“Perhaps the most beloved glacier for the people of Mérida was Pico Bolívar, which has been a remnant of a glacier since 2012. But 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 will happen for Humboldt: until the last piece of ice disappears. If it disappears, we will continue to say it is a glacier.”
An earlier version of this story first appeared on Noticias Telemundo.
This article first appeared on NBCNews.com.