A message from the Frozen World to Global Leaders at COP29
Press Release
November 12, 2024
Under the leadership of Norway’s Chairship of the Arctic Council, key stakeholders and rightsholders from polar, mountainous and vulnerable low-lying regions are addressing the critical issue of cryosphere change at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The high-level side-event, “A Message from the Frozen World – the Global Impact of a Changing Cryosphere,” aims to emphasize the urgency of ice loss and its global effects. The event is scheduled for 12 November 2024, 16:45-18:15, with contributors including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, the Inuit Circumpolar Council, the World Meteorological Organization, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, the Arctic Council’s Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.
See the side event outline and speakers. Live stream available!
All people on Earth depend on the cryosphere. Snow, glaciers, ice sheets, sea ice, and permafrost are significant reservoirs and sources of freshwater, sustaining ecosystems and supporting livelihoods. Approximately 70% of the Earth’s freshwater is stored in glaciers and ice sheets. However, anthropogenic emissions are driving rapid changes in the cryosphere, leading to global consequences including rising sea levels, loss of water resources, accelerated warming, extreme weather events, and significant impacts on biodiversity, ecosystems, and human livelihoods. Coastal regions, low-lying islands, polar and high mountain areas are especially vulnerable.
Spotlight on the cryosphere at COP29
“Norway, as chair of the Arctic Council, recognizes the cryosphere’s critical role and is committed to amplifying the urgent message from the polar and high mountain regions. We must leverage scientific research and Indigenous Knowledge to tackle these issues. The Arctic Council is vital for this collaboration, yet this is a global concern. To slow irreversible climate change, we must keep global temperatures below 1.5°C.”Morten Høglund, Chair of the Arctic Council’s Senior Arctic Officials.
The side event will highlight the changes scientists, Indigenous Peoples and national policy makers are observing and navigating firsthand. The session aims to identify the serious impacts of climate change in the Arctic, Antarctica, and mountain cryosphere, and relate these to vulnerable low-lying and downstream populations. It will emphasize the impact on Indigenous Peoples and the need to equitably and ethically utilize the Knowledge of Indigenous Peoples in response to these changes. The event will stress the critical need to tackle emissions and advocate for decisive action based on the latest data and policy recommendations.
Regional cryosphere changes – global impacts
The Arctic is one of the regions most impacted by climate change. In the last 45 years, it has warmed at three times the global average, severely impacting its environment, biodiversity, and communities. But changes in the region extend far beyond the Arctic; its effects are felt worldwide.
A significant part of the population in the Arctic and high mountain regions are Indigenous Peoples. This includes over 180,000 Inuit that have lived and thrived in Inuit Nunaat, the circumpolar Inuit homeland, for millennia and have unique Knowledge about the ice and the ecosystems it sustains. Inuit livelihoods, culture, and ways of life are particularly impacted by the changing cryosphere and a multitude of other external compounding threats that were not caused by Inuit, yet they are experiencing its consequences.
“Inuit are a people of the cryosphere. We are deeply and intrinsically connected with sea ice and the nature of a frozen landscape for traveling, hunting, safely living on our lands and harvesting our marine resources. In recent years, Inuit have increasingly been impacted by the lack of ice, which affects our health, wellbeing and livelihoods, thereby impacting our collective and individual rights.”Sara Olsvig, Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC).
“For centuries, the lives of communities in the Hindu Kush Himalayas have been intrinsically linked to the mountain cryosphere. Now, however the snowpack and frozen water stores that have sustained these communities’ livelihoods, settlements, cultures are disappearing at an unprecedented pace, already rendering life in too many mountain settlements unviable. Climate-driven hazards are outpacing efforts at resilience building. We must do more to champion and amplify the ground-realities of these traditional custodians of mountain ecosystems, to revive their culture of care for cryosphere and the ecological and human systems it supports, and to equip them with the tools and finance to adapt.”Pema Gyamtsho, Director General, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development
The Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets have certain thresholds where irreversible collapse becomes inevitable and, in the case of West Antarctica especially, may be quite close without far stronger emissions reductions, leading to potentially rapid sea-level rise that could result in 3 meters already early in the next century.
“A temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius versus current policies, that will take us well above 2 degrees, makes all the difference in the world. With very high emissions, the latest IPCC Report AR6 concluded that 15 meters sea-level rise by 2300 cannot be ruled out. Leaders must understand that we are in the cryosphere risk zone.”Dr. Robert DeConto, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) author
“WMO published its State of the Climate Update at COP29. It confirms that 2024 is on track to be the hottest year on record, and this has profound implications for the cryosphere. Arctic sea ice extent in 2024 was once again below average and Antarctic sea ice extent was the second lowest on record. Glacier loss is worsening. In 2023, glaciers lost a record 1.2-meter water equivalent of ice – about five times the amount of water in the Dead Sea. It was the largest loss since measurements began in 1953 and was due to extreme melting in North America and Europe. We are sending out an SOS on the cryosphere.”Celeste Saulo, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization.
The side event will be recorded and made available at a later date here.
The Arctic Council and the Cryosphere
The Arctic Council has been playing a leading role on the cross-cutting issue of cryosphere changes in the Arctic for over two decades. Numerous official declarations and reports emphasize the critical role of the global cryosphere in stabilizing the climate, its sensitivity to greenhouse gas emissions and short-lived climate pollutants, and the urgent need to reduce emissions both to protect the Arctic cryosphere and preserve the stability of our global climate.
”The cryosphere in the Arctic acts as a stabilizer, contributing to balance the climate system by reflecting solar radiation off the white surfaces of glaciers, snow cover, sea ice, and ice sheets. When snow and ice melt, however, this radiation is absorbed by the exposed ocean or ground beneath, leading to feedback that intensifies warming within the climate system”, Rolf Rødven, Executive Secretary of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme.
This year, the Council will be celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the landmark Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report, originally published by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) – two Working Groups of the Arctic Council – and the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) in 2004. Over 300 scientists, experts, and Indigenous Peoples’ representatives contributed to this first comprehensive, multidisciplinary account of climate change in the Arctic. The result is probably one of the most widely read documents focused specifically on the Arctic, and one of the world’s first in-depth regional accounts of climate change impacts.
AMAP is currently finalizing its Arctic Climate Change Update Report 2024, which will be pre-launched at the COP29 WMO/IPCC/MERI pavilion on November 13th at 12:30pm and officially released at the Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø in January 2025.
Input to the Event from Norwegian Researchers
Permafrost in Svalbard, as in other parts of the Arctic, has been undergoing significant changes due to rising temperatures and climate change. In Longyearbyen, the Svalbard’s administrative center, temperature has increased by 5°C since 1981, significantly above the global average temperature increase.
“In 2024, we needed to descend 2.18 meters to reach the permafrost surface at one of the monitoring stations, which is approximately 60 centimeters deeper than the initial measurements about 25 years ago” said Ketil Isaksen, scientist at MET Norway and an AMAP expert.
Monitoring permafrost thaw with local stations alone is difficult due to limited in coverage. The new InSAR Svalbard satellite service, designed to capture ground subsidence with millimeter precision, is being developed to solve this. By combining satellite and station data, researchers will be able to track permafrost melt over larger areas and longer periods. This approach could pave the way for global permafrost monitoring through international collaboration.
NT5
