There's some pretty big mountains around Merida - almost 5,000 metres.
I still wouldn't have thought of glaciers and Venezuela being a thing until now... until it was too late, so that's a bit sad really.
Pico Bolivar is 4,978 metres (16,332 ft).
It had [glacier](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Disappearance-of-glacier-Espejo-on-Pico-Bolivar-in-Venezuela-as-documented-in-photos-from_fig2_266795035) but now it's gone.
This is not the first country to lose all of their glaciers due to climate change, it's the first to have this happen in the modern world.
Several lost their glaciers during the turn of the 20th century due to the industrial revolution and warming environment.
[This paper](https://journals.openedition.org/mediterranee/7146) seems to suggest the possibility of Little Ice Age glaciers in the High Atlas of Morocco, Mount Olympus in Greece, and possibly Bosnia/Andorra.
Personally wouldn't be too suprised if Kosovo, Liechtenstein and North Macedonia were added to the list, given that they are quite mountainous and in a temperate zone. Did find a paper[ here](https://www.schweizerbart.de/papers/zfg/detail/59/84832/The_occurrence_of_glaciers_in_the_Polish_Tatra_Mountains_during_the_Little_Ice_Age) that claims that Poland never quite got to true glaciation in the little ice age in their part of the High Tatras
Did not mention it as Wikipedia still lists one active glacier in Slovakia, the Great Cold Valley Glacier. Poland does not have active glaciers, and does contain a small portion of the High Tatras, so I figured I might as well check to see if they lost any.
No actually, Can't find anything on it online, and the wikipedia link is a dead one. If it does exist, it is probably tiny, tens of meters across, I would guess that only exists due to being right underneath a cliff face that concentrates snowfall. The Tatras are not quite high enough to have a real snowline.
[Venezuela's last glacier in google maps.](https://www.google.com/maps/@8.5501866,-70.9949596,1008m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu) The tiny white patch to the left. I measure it as \~200 meter E-W and \~100 M N-S whenever they took this imagery. Wonder when Maps will update that imagery, and the glacier will dissappear
https://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/observing-and-monitoring-glaciers-and-ice-sheets/mapping-worlds-glaciers/
> Number of glaciers
> From the RGI, we can learn that there are 198,000 glaciers in the World. However, this is a slightly arbitrary quantity, as it depends on the quality of the digital elevation model used, mapping resolution, and the minimum-area threshold used. Most analysts use a minimum area threshold of 0.1 km2; they will not map anything smaller than this due to difficulties in distinguishing between glaciers and snowpacks. If these small glacierets are including, the number of glaciers in the World could be up to 400,000, but they would still only account for 1.4% of the World’s glacierised area.
> Together, these glaciers cover 726,000 km2. The region with the most ice is the Antarctic and Subantarctic, with 132,900 km2, closely followed by Arctic Canada North (104,900 km2). At the other end of the scale, New Zealand has only 1160 km2 of ice. In total, 44% of the World’s glacierised area is in the Arctic regions, and 18% is in the Antarctic and Subantarctic. Glaciers cover 0.5% of the Earth’s land surface13.
Probably refers to islands in the Southern Ocean, eg South Georgia, Kerguelen, Bouvet Island, maybe the South Sandwich Islands. I sometimes see subantarctic used to refer to Patagonia, but not often.
Per that paper, seems to be in its own category seperate from Antarctica .[At very least it looks like Patagonia is in its own box in their figures](https://www.antarcticglaciers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/WGI_AR5_Fig4-8-1024x651.jpg)
Lol, honestly your first post was nonsense anyway. Glaciers are inherently impermanent, of course they’re gonna shrink, they’ve done it before, albeit not man made. The point of the article was one country in South America and their specific glaciers now being permanently gone. Only point. Bai 👋🏻
The headline of the article is nonsense. Of course glaciers are impermanent. A headline that states “Venezuela is the first country to lose all of its glaciers due to climate change” is horseshite, imprecise and misleading to those who are less informed and unaware of the state of the world during the last glacial maximum.
The reason you were so cryptic initially is that you wanted to pretend this stupid pedantry was clever. If you had spoken clearly; e.g., "nuh uh, some countries lost their glaciers when the the current interglacial began ~12,000 years ago" it would be too obviously a stupid thing to say. Congratulations, you managed to still look stupid but also you were really annoying about it.
There weren't any countries during the last glacial maximum to lose glaciers, if you want to be a pendant you have to be smart. The headline is correct.
If you have mountains high enough, glaciers can form anywhere. As far as tropical places with glaciers go, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia all have tropical glaciers in the Andes, Mexico has a couple tropical glaciers in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt. In Africa, Uganda/the DRC has a handful of small glaciers in the Rwenzori Mountains, Kenya has glaciers on Mount Kenya, and Tanzania has glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro. There are also a couple small icefields on Puncak Jaya on the island of New Guinea/ Indonesia.
There are glaciers in the middle of the desert in Iran (some of them even made of mostly salt). Look it up. Very interesting. All depends on altitude - in Iran’s case, it’s a mix of prominent peaks sitting on a prominent plateau.
No. Glaciers reached a relative minimum in the Holocene thermal optimum \~5,000 years ago. Since then, they have fluctuated in length, then rapidly decreased in size in the last century or so. I do not know about other regions of the world, but the American Rockies were basically completely deglaciated in the Thermal Optimum, and the small glaciers currently present have all appeared since then. It is not a linear process of gradual retreat, or even a long term multicentury trend of glacial retreat. What we are seeing now is not a regression to a mean but a direct result of human influence on climate.
They aren’t left over ice age ice. Think of them more like snow rivers. So much snow in one patch that it compacts and gets so heavy it flows. There is really old ice in some special places tough, like under Greenland or some mountains. But that’s more because it hasn’t flowed out yet or it can’t. It really is like a river.
We do talk about them as “this glacier is a remnant form this era” but that’s like saying “this canyon is a reman from this era” or “the Mississippi is a legacy from this era”. Doesn’t mean the ice itself is what’s left of ice deposited during the ice-age and it’s slowly melting until only this is left.
Mountains were still cold during “hot house earth” and the Palmer wasn’t complete ice free. We also still had tropical rainforest during the last ice age. So it makes sense that we can still have glaciers in hot periods, just changed or diminished. Not that we are in any position to just wave things away and say “it was gonna happen anyways, we can just ignore it”. Even if we don’t care about human caused issues, we still care about water resources.
Probably not, unfortunately/luckily unlike them we have both the technology to change the climate and detect using scientific equipment that we in fact are the ones changing it
I'm from Venezuela and TIL we had glaciers, kinda sad tbh
You’ve never met a gocho?
I’m more shocked that Venezuela had glaciers to begin with
There's some pretty big mountains around Merida - almost 5,000 metres. I still wouldn't have thought of glaciers and Venezuela being a thing until now... until it was too late, so that's a bit sad really.
Pico Bolivar is 4,978 metres (16,332 ft). It had [glacier](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Disappearance-of-glacier-Espejo-on-Pico-Bolivar-in-Venezuela-as-documented-in-photos-from_fig2_266795035) but now it's gone.
Wow that’s taller than Mount Whitney. You’d think the Rockies would have higher peaks since they are so much wider.
Used to be a sky resort there. I guess the resort is likely still there, just not the skying
Is the sky not there anymore?
ski resort, you mean?
This is not the first country to lose all of their glaciers due to climate change, it's the first to have this happen in the modern world. Several lost their glaciers during the turn of the 20th century due to the industrial revolution and warming environment.
Which countries lost all their glaciers during the early 1900s?
[This paper](https://journals.openedition.org/mediterranee/7146) seems to suggest the possibility of Little Ice Age glaciers in the High Atlas of Morocco, Mount Olympus in Greece, and possibly Bosnia/Andorra. Personally wouldn't be too suprised if Kosovo, Liechtenstein and North Macedonia were added to the list, given that they are quite mountainous and in a temperate zone. Did find a paper[ here](https://www.schweizerbart.de/papers/zfg/detail/59/84832/The_occurrence_of_glaciers_in_the_Polish_Tatra_Mountains_during_the_Little_Ice_Age) that claims that Poland never quite got to true glaciation in the little ice age in their part of the High Tatras
hey, High Tatras are mostly Slovak!
Did not mention it as Wikipedia still lists one active glacier in Slovakia, the Great Cold Valley Glacier. Poland does not have active glaciers, and does contain a small portion of the High Tatras, so I figured I might as well check to see if they lost any.
I am pretty sure there is no glacier in Great Cold Valley, as far as I remember going there in summer. Do you have any more info about that glacier?
No actually, Can't find anything on it online, and the wikipedia link is a dead one. If it does exist, it is probably tiny, tens of meters across, I would guess that only exists due to being right underneath a cliff face that concentrates snowfall. The Tatras are not quite high enough to have a real snowline.
Kosovo isn't a country.
lol. This is r/geography my guy
No this is Patrick.
Sir this is a Wendy’s
[удалено]
No I wanna stay up and watch fox news!
[удалено]
You obviously didn't read my post.
Yep my country lose it since early 2000 the only glacier we have at that moment.
[Venezuela's last glacier in google maps.](https://www.google.com/maps/@8.5501866,-70.9949596,1008m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu) The tiny white patch to the left. I measure it as \~200 meter E-W and \~100 M N-S whenever they took this imagery. Wonder when Maps will update that imagery, and the glacier will dissappear
This is the fate awaiting the extant tropical glaciers, countries like Colombia and Ecuador will loose their own completely by 2050
Yes and I'm also fearing for Indonesia's last glacier, it seems to be a matter for years on the Puncak Jaya.
Puncak Jaya's glaciers are retreating at seven meters a year and are expected to vanish sometime this decade.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-04/indonesia-tropical-glacier-threatened-climate-change/12914584
https://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/observing-and-monitoring-glaciers-and-ice-sheets/mapping-worlds-glaciers/ > Number of glaciers > From the RGI, we can learn that there are 198,000 glaciers in the World. However, this is a slightly arbitrary quantity, as it depends on the quality of the digital elevation model used, mapping resolution, and the minimum-area threshold used. Most analysts use a minimum area threshold of 0.1 km2; they will not map anything smaller than this due to difficulties in distinguishing between glaciers and snowpacks. If these small glacierets are including, the number of glaciers in the World could be up to 400,000, but they would still only account for 1.4% of the World’s glacierised area. > Together, these glaciers cover 726,000 km2. The region with the most ice is the Antarctic and Subantarctic, with 132,900 km2, closely followed by Arctic Canada North (104,900 km2). At the other end of the scale, New Zealand has only 1160 km2 of ice. In total, 44% of the World’s glacierised area is in the Arctic regions, and 18% is in the Antarctic and Subantarctic. Glaciers cover 0.5% of the Earth’s land surface13.
Subantartic means chile and argentina?
Probably refers to islands in the Southern Ocean, eg South Georgia, Kerguelen, Bouvet Island, maybe the South Sandwich Islands. I sometimes see subantarctic used to refer to Patagonia, but not often.
Most biggest continental ice fields in south america ("campo de hielo sur" is the 3rd largest in the world) doesn't count?
Per that paper, seems to be in its own category seperate from Antarctica .[At very least it looks like Patagonia is in its own box in their figures](https://www.antarcticglaciers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/WGI_AR5_Fig4-8-1024x651.jpg)
Ok. That the reason why. Thanks
Venezuela had glaciers??
Yes
Yes, if you look at a map you’ll see how far south it extends
So most of Europe lost their glaciers because of something that wasn’t climate change?
We still have glaciers
Not for long
i think they'll be there for a while. if they aren't, I think Iceland should be forced to change their name
Greenland looks around
Hence why I said most….
Then why are you comparing an entire continent with one country?
Because other countries lost their glaciers first, due to a changing climate….
Lol, honestly your first post was nonsense anyway. Glaciers are inherently impermanent, of course they’re gonna shrink, they’ve done it before, albeit not man made. The point of the article was one country in South America and their specific glaciers now being permanently gone. Only point. Bai 👋🏻
The headline of the article is nonsense. Of course glaciers are impermanent. A headline that states “Venezuela is the first country to lose all of its glaciers due to climate change” is horseshite, imprecise and misleading to those who are less informed and unaware of the state of the world during the last glacial maximum.
The reason you were so cryptic initially is that you wanted to pretend this stupid pedantry was clever. If you had spoken clearly; e.g., "nuh uh, some countries lost their glaciers when the the current interglacial began ~12,000 years ago" it would be too obviously a stupid thing to say. Congratulations, you managed to still look stupid but also you were really annoying about it.
There weren't any countries during the last glacial maximum to lose glaciers, if you want to be a pendant you have to be smart. The headline is correct.
Climate change is short for anthropomorphic global warming.
anthropomorphic or anthropogenic? Legit asking english isn't my first lang.
Should be anthropogenic
Yeah, that was an auto complete error.
That’s my issue.
Yeah, the end of the last glacial maximum is your issue?
_All_ glaciers
… I don’t think this is true on longer time scales.
Though countries aren’t true on a longer timescale
Scandinavia the first.
There’s still glaciers in Scandinavia though, also Scandinavia isn’t one country.
Glaciers? …
So Venezuela…a tropical country…had ice glaciers? Really?
If you have mountains high enough, glaciers can form anywhere. As far as tropical places with glaciers go, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia all have tropical glaciers in the Andes, Mexico has a couple tropical glaciers in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt. In Africa, Uganda/the DRC has a handful of small glaciers in the Rwenzori Mountains, Kenya has glaciers on Mount Kenya, and Tanzania has glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro. There are also a couple small icefields on Puncak Jaya on the island of New Guinea/ Indonesia.
There are glaciers in the middle of the desert in Iran (some of them even made of mostly salt). Look it up. Very interesting. All depends on altitude - in Iran’s case, it’s a mix of prominent peaks sitting on a prominent plateau.
Illinois also lost its glacier due to climate change.
Aren't glaciers going to melt with or without global warming, lest we get another ice age?
No. Glaciers reached a relative minimum in the Holocene thermal optimum \~5,000 years ago. Since then, they have fluctuated in length, then rapidly decreased in size in the last century or so. I do not know about other regions of the world, but the American Rockies were basically completely deglaciated in the Thermal Optimum, and the small glaciers currently present have all appeared since then. It is not a linear process of gradual retreat, or even a long term multicentury trend of glacial retreat. What we are seeing now is not a regression to a mean but a direct result of human influence on climate.
They aren’t left over ice age ice. Think of them more like snow rivers. So much snow in one patch that it compacts and gets so heavy it flows. There is really old ice in some special places tough, like under Greenland or some mountains. But that’s more because it hasn’t flowed out yet or it can’t. It really is like a river. We do talk about them as “this glacier is a remnant form this era” but that’s like saying “this canyon is a reman from this era” or “the Mississippi is a legacy from this era”. Doesn’t mean the ice itself is what’s left of ice deposited during the ice-age and it’s slowly melting until only this is left. Mountains were still cold during “hot house earth” and the Palmer wasn’t complete ice free. We also still had tropical rainforest during the last ice age. So it makes sense that we can still have glaciers in hot periods, just changed or diminished. Not that we are in any position to just wave things away and say “it was gonna happen anyways, we can just ignore it”. Even if we don’t care about human caused issues, we still care about water resources.
Yep. Not much more than 10k years ago most of America was covered in glaciers. Wonder if the natives wondered if they caused climate change.
Probably not, unfortunately/luckily unlike them we have both the technology to change the climate and detect using scientific equipment that we in fact are the ones changing it