The last glacier in Venezuela is gone

Venezuela’s last remaining glacier has shrunk so much that scientists now categorize it as an ice field. The country is thus believed to be the first in modern times to see all its glaciers disappear, reports The Guardian.

There used to be six glaciers in Venezuela in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida mountain range, 5,000 meters above sea level in the northern Andes.

Five of the glaciers were already gone in 2011. Then only the so-called Humboldt Glacier remained near Venezuela’s second highest peak, Pico Humboldt.

Scientists had estimated that the glacier would remain for at least a decade, but it is now clear that it melted much faster than that. It is now less than two hectares and can no longer be classified as a glacier.

Luis Daniel Llambi, an ecologist with a climate change adaptation research program in the Andes, says Venezuela’s lost glaciers are an example of what will continue from north to south in the mountain range. First in Colombia and Ecuador, then in Peru and Bolivia.

– That Venezuela has now lost all its glaciers is a clear symbol of the changes we can expect to see around the global cryosphere during continued climate change, he tells The Guardian.