111 - The great melt

Trillion of tons of ice lost and counting

The Climate Mentor
February 28th, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

What happens when the planet’s ice disappears? 🧊

We already touched upon this topic some time ago here when discussing the Artic, but ice meltdown is more wide and interesting.

Glaciers in fact are vanishing at an alarming rate, and scientists warn that we’re approaching a tipping point.

A staggering 7 trillion tons of ice have melted from the world’s glaciers since 2000, fueling rising sea levels, water shortages, and extreme weather events.

But this isn’t just a climate issue—it’s an economic one too.

With global infrastructure at risk and entire industries dependent on stable water supplies, investors and policymakers need to pay attention.

Are we witnessing the next financial crisis driven by climate change?

An infographic from Visual Capitalist illustrating the rapid decline of Earth's ice from 1995 to 2019, based on satellite observations and numerical models. The visualization shows mass loss from Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, ice shelf calving and thinning, Greenland, Antarctica, and glaciers. It highlights that 28 trillion tonnes of ice have melted, leading to an average global sea level rise of 34.6mm. The chart also notes that 58% of ice loss occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, with major consequences including wildlife habitat loss, coastal erosion, changing ocean currents, and extreme temperatures. The data source is a study by Slater et al. (2021) published in The Cryosphere.

The Great Ice Meltdown

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