Lost Ice, Global Damage

In the State of the Cryosphere 2024 – Lost Ice, Global Damage report, over 50 leading cryosphere scientists warn of vastly higher impacts and costs to the global economy given accelerating losses in the world’s snow and ice regions. Current climate commitments, leading the world to well over 2°C of warming, would bring disastrous and irreversible consequences for billions of people from global ice loss.

Based on the most recent cryosphere science updates from 2024, the authors underscore that the costs of loss and damage will be even more extreme, with many regions experiencing sea-level rise or water resource loss well beyond adaptation limits in this century if our current level of emissions continues – leading towards a rise of 3°C or more. Mitigation will also become more costly due to feedbacks from thawing permafrost emissions and loss of sea ice.

For the first time, the report notes a growing scientific consensus that melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, among other factors, may be slowing important ocean currents at both poles, with potentially dire consequences for a much colder northern Europe and greater sea-level rise along the U.S. East Coast.

Reviewed and supported by over 50 leading cryosphere scientists, this is the latest report in the State of the Cryosphere series, which takes the pulse of the cryosphere on an annual basis. The cryosphere is the name given to Earth’s snow and ice regions and ranges from ice sheets, glaciers, snow and permafrost to sea ice and the polar oceans – which are acidifying far more rapidly than warmer waters. The report describes how a combination of melting polar ice sheets, vanishing glaciers, and thawing permafrost will have rapid, irreversible, and disastrous impacts worldwide.