Venezuela's last glacier: Racing against climate's clock

Scientists initially estimated that it would survive for at least several decades. Unfortunately, recent studies show that the great glacier is melting alarmingly fast.

In Venezuela, in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida mountain range, there were six glaciers. Five of them disappeared by 2011. Since then, the Humboldt Glacier, also known as La Corona, remained alone. Now it seems that even it will disappear.

Climatologists from Venezuela declared that the only remaining glacier in South America, La Corona in the Andes, has become "too small to be still classified as a glacier."

"There has not been much ice cover on the last Venezuelan glacier since the 2000s", said Dr. Caroline Clason.

The expert from the University of Durham informed that Humboldt has been reclassified as an ice field. Thus, Venezuela is said to be the first country in the world to lose all its glaciers.

"An ice field like the Humboldt - roughly equivalent to the area of two football pitches - "is not a glacier" - stated Prof. Mark Maslin of the University of London, quoted by the BBC.

The latest forecasts show that by the year 2100, depending on the region, between 20 to even 80 percent of glaciers worldwide could disappear. According to climatologist Maximiliano Herrera, the following countries that could lose all their glaciers are Indonesia, Mexico, and Slovenia. In many regions of these countries, record high temperatures have been recorded in recent months, which could have also accelerated glacier melting.

One cause is climate warming. Scientists from the National Geological Institute claim that current warming will probably reach its peak near the end of this century.