Glaciers are in the spotlight in 2025, through the UN International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation (IYGP) and the inaugural World Day of Glaciers on March 21. The latter event was celebrated with high-level ceremonies at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris and UN Headquarters in New York City. The UN special year is jointly co-facilitated by UNESCO and the WMO, but the governments of Tajikistan and France, and many organizations, including the MRI, are providing tireless leadership behind the scenes. 

These events offer a high-profile voice to the glaciers even as the story from the front lines continues to be grim. The Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (GlaMBIE) team documented a global glacier mass loss of 6550 billion tonnes of ice from 2000-2023, equivalent to 93 L of water per day for every person on Earth. If we could only find a way to distribute this water to those that need it! Instead, mountain glaciers and polar ice caps have now become the primary driver of global sea level rise, surpassing the Greenland Ice Sheet. The World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) indicates that 2024 had the most negative mass balance on record (since 1950) for the global network of reference glaciers, continuing a trend of accelerated glacier loss since the turn of the century. The annual WMO State of the Global Climate report notes that the glacier mass loss was just one of many extremes in 2024, including record highs (since 1850) for greenhouse gas concentrations, global temperature, ocean heat content, and global sea level.

This sounds despairing, but it helps to underscore the urgency of the moment. The tone at the UN World Day of Glaciers events was positive – more of a call to action – and the participating dignitaries, scientists, and glacier experts from many nations were of one voice. For my part, I admit that I was initially skeptical of the framing of ‘preservation’ for the international glacier year. We can do little to save the glaciers in 2025, and those of us involved in the IYGP have had to fend off confusion as to whether we are advocating for geoengineering interventions to turn things around. But I have come around, influenced by the impassioned pleas from the floor in New York and Paris. It is not too late to save most of the world’s glaciers, and the sooner we act to stabilize the climate system, the more glacier ice will survive this century. Glaciers are a poignant symbol of this objective to reduce emissions and invest in a better future for the planet.  

This is a long road, but there are concrete actions that we need to take in 2025, to take advantage of IYGP and advance glacier science, capacity, knowledge mobilization, and partnerships. IYGP activities to date are effectively communicating the importance of glaciers and the mountain cryosphere, and this message is reaching new audiences. In terms of ensuring a legacy, however, we have a window and some work to do. This could look like increased monitoring and science capacity in under-studied parts of the world, deeper collaboration and coordination across nations and sectors, building off of the WMO Early Warnings for All initiatives to increase real-time monitoring in areas prone to glacier hazards, improved high-resolution meteorological modelling and remote sensing capabilities in mountain environments as needed to drive glaciological and hydrological models, initiatives to generate (and validate) mountain climate reanalyses, and many other ideas that the community needs to brainstorm and advance.

If some of these ideas appear familiar, it’s because they reflect the recommendations and call to action from the 2019 High Mountain Summit (HMS), sponsored by the WMO and with leadership from MRI and the University of Saskatchewan. This was a visionary meeting, and you can draw a direct line between the Summit and the IYGP, amongst many other activities and collaborations that have flowed from the HMS. This includes my own engagement with MRI, which is enriching to reflect on as I spell off of the MRI Science Leadership Council this year. It has been a profound privilege, and I can say that the MRI is the most inspiring organization and most wonderful set of colleagues that I have ever worked with. There is a lot still to do, so I move on with the certainty that the story is not over, and I will find new ways to engage with the important work of MRI, preserving the mountain environments that we all hold dear.   

About the Author

Dr. Shawn Marshall works as Chief Scientific Officer for Environment and Climate Change Canada, and is a Glaciologist and Adjunct Professor at the University of Calgary. He is currently a member of the MRI Science Leadership Council.

All photos courtesy of Dr. Shawn Marshall.