https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx8qv1nvdppo
'Venezuela may be the first nation in modern history to lose all its glaciers
after climate scientists downgraded its last one to an ice field.
The International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), a scientific advocacy
organisation, said on X 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".
Venezuela has lost at least six other glaciers in the last century.
With global average temperatures rising due to climate change, ice loss is
increasing, helping to raise sea levels around the world.
"There has not been much ice cover on the last Venezuelan glacier since the
2000s", Dr Caroline Clason, a glaciologist at Durham University, told
Newsround. "Now it's not being added to, so it has been reclassified as an ice
field."
In March, researchers at the University of Los Andes in Colombia told AFP the
glacier had shrunk from 450 hectares to just two.
Luis Daniel Llambi, an ecologist at the university, told the
Guardian that it
had now shrunk to less than that.
While there is no global standard for the minimum size a body of ice must be to
qualify as a glacier, the US Geological Survey says a commonly accepted
guideline is around 10 hectares.
One study, published in 2020, suggested the glacier shrank to less than this
sometime between 2015 and 2016 - though it was still considered Venezuela's
last glacier by Nasa in 2018.'
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
