Shrinking sea ice, melting glaciers... The rapid and sometimes irreversible changes in the cryosphere - the surface where water is in the state of ice - under the effect of climate change require urgent international coordination, the UN warned on Tuesday (May 30th).
By a unanimous decision of the member countries of the World Meteorological Organization currently meeting in Congress in Geneva, the organization approved a resolution that makes the study of changes in the cryosphere "one of its main priorities," a spokeswoman for the UN agency, Clare Nullis, told reporters on Tuesday.
'Growing impacts'
The decision was made "given the increasing impacts of shrinking sea ice, melting glaciers, ice sheets, permafrost and snow on sea level rise, water risks and water security, economies and ecosystems," she said. The world's leading meteorological experts are meeting from 22 May to 2 June in the Swiss city to elect the organisation's new secretary-general and discuss many topics, including the effects of global warming on the cryosphere, which includes sea ice, glaciers, polar ice caps and permanently frozen ground.
The adopted resolution calls for better coordination of observations and forecasts, as well as on the exchange of data and research. For its part, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) will intensify its activities on the subject. "The cryosphere issue is not only a hot topic for the Arctic and Antarctic, it is also a global problem," WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas of Finland said in a statement.
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During the debates, delegates from around the world - from small island states in the Caribbean to Africa, from Russia to Canada - expressed concern about rapid, and some irreversible, changes in the cryosphere, Nullis said. "We need more oversight to monitor the scale and speed of change. And we really need to think seriously about water resources management," she insisted. She pointed out by way of example that more than a billion people depend on water that comes from melting snow and glaciers: when the glaciers are gone, "think about what will happen to the security of these people's water supply." As for the Arctic permafrost, described as a "sleeping giant", it stores twice as much carbon as the atmosphere today, noted the spokeswoman.