Earth’s glaciers are melting at an accelerating pace – read GLaMBIE’s most recent report
21st February 2025
This week, the Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (GlaMBIE) has released a new report in Nature, assessing mass changes in the balance of the Earth’s glaciers from 2000 to 2023. The report shows that during this period, glaciers around the world have lost somewhere between 2% and 39% of their ice regionally and around 5% globally.
The team is co-led by Professor Michael Zemp (University of Zurich) and CPOM’s Associate Investigator: Ice Sheet Modelling and Satellite InSAR, Professor Noel Gourmelen (University of Edinburgh). It is coordinated by the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) at the University of Zurich, in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh and Earthwave Ltd.
There are an estimated 200,000 glaciers across the Earth and so monitoring them all individually is very challenging. That is why satellite observations are so important as they enable scientists to produce robust and accurate assessments of how much ice glaciers contain, and how rapidly they are melting. This is crucial if we are to protect our planet from the effects of climate change and to prepare for a warmer planet in the future.
2025 is the UN’s International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation, so never has there been a more pressing time to take notice of what’s happening in the cryosphere and strive to protect it.
You can read Professor Noel Gourmelen’s comments on GLaMBIE’s recent findings in this article from The Guardian, alongside comments from CPOM Director, Professor Andrew Shepherd.
The research is funded by the Science for Society element of ESA’s FutureEO programme, with additional support from the International Association for Cryospheric Sciences and various institutional partners
