Glaciers worldwide have lost 20 meters of water equivalent since 1976
Glaciers on the Climate Dashboard
Glaciers are crucial freshwater reserves, but they've been shrinking for decades. The World Glacier Monitoring Service tracks reference glaciers across 19 mountain regions, and their cumulative mass loss since 1976 equals about 20 meters of water equivalent. This meltwater contributes to sea-level rise, threatening coastal communities. While each glacier responds uniquely to local factors, the IPCC concludes with high confidence that human influence is a major driver of the observed global glacier retreat.
The IPCC AR5 concluded that 'the robustness of the estimates of observed mass loss since the 1960s, the confidence we have in estimates of natural variations and internal variability from long-term glacier records, and our understanding of glacier response to climatic drivers provides robust evidence and, therefore, high confidence that a substantial part of the mass loss of glaciers is likely due to human influence.'