Earth’s frozen regions are sending a clear warning about climate change – but politicians are ignoring it

“We cannot negotiate with the melting point of ice.” That’s the message from more than 50 leading scientists who study the Earth’s frozen regions, published in the latest annual State of the Cryosphere report . In the past year alone, the vast polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are likely to have shed around 370 billion tonnes of ice, with a further 270 billion tonnes from the 270,000 mountain glaciers around the world, some of which are disappearing altogether. In February 2025, global sea ice extent reached a new all-time minimum in the 47-year satellite record. Elsewhere, perennially frozen ground (called permafrost) continues to thaw, releasing additional greenhouse gas emissions each year that are roughly equivalent to the world’s eighth-highest-emitting country. The warning lights from the cryosphere have been flashing red for several years, and governments ignore this at their peril. Melting ice is driving an acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise, which has doubled to 4.5mm per year over the last three decades. If this acceleration continues, sea-level rise will reach around 1cm per year by the end of this century - a rate so high that many island and coastal communities will be forced to move. The loss of mountain glaciers will affect billions of people who rely on their meltwater for agriculture, hydropower and other human activities; and the damage caused to infrastructure by Arctic permafrost thaw has been estimated to cost US$182 billion (£137 billion) by 2050 under our current emissions trajectory. Negotiations based on ‘best available’ science In an effort to reduce the risks and effects of climate change, including those from the cryosphere described above, the Paris climate agreement was adopted by 195 countries at the annual UN climate summit in 2015, with the aim of limiting “the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”. Its implementation should be based on and guided by the “best available science”. That includes evidence provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ), a group created by the UN to provide governments with regular assessments of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. This guiding principle was strengthened by the International Court of Justice in July 2025, which reaffirmed 1.5°C as the primary legally binding target for climate policies under the Paris climate agreement. Yet recent climate negotiations, including at the UN climate summit in Brazil in November 2025 ( Cop30 ), have seen some countries - largely fossil fuel producers - push back on previously standard language endorsing the IPCC as a source of the “best available science”. As cryosphere scientists who regularly attend the UN’s climate summits, we have noticed recent efforts to downplay, confuse and dilute some of the latest scientific findings, especially from the cryosphere. We find this alarming. At Cop30, observations about the complete loss of glaciers in two countries ( Slovenia and Venezuela ) were...

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