GEUS joins World Day for Glaciers

Published 20-03-2025

21 March 2025 is the first World Day for Glaciers, declared by the United Nations (UN) along with the International Year of Glaciers 2025.

Glacier in greenland (GEUS). IYoGP logo (UNESCO and WMO).

GEUS joins the United Nations in marking the first-ever World Day for Glaciers, to be celebrated on 21 March 2025. The World Day for Glaciers is held in relation to the UN World Water Day 22 March 2025, which focuses on glacier preservation this year.
UNESCO and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) are organising the campaign about the UN World Day for Glaciers.

According to the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) there are 275,000 glaciers (distinct from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets) covering an area of 700,000 km²in the world.

The UN has declared 2025 the International Year of Glacier's Preservation, and GEUS will share insights into how we contribute to research into glaciers on GEUS' LinkedIn page throughout the year.

Follow GEUS on LinkedIn.

Get an overview of some of the latest research into and research projects about glaciers GEUS has contributed to here.

Glaciers contribute more to sea level rise than the ice sheets

Glaciers currently contribute more to sea level rise than the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, as presented in a recent study published in Nature by the GlaMBIE team:

Read the research article ’Community estimate of global glacier mass changes from 2000 to 2023’ at nature.com

How does melting glaciers affect their neighbours?

In a newly announced research project, researchers will investigate how melting glaciers affect their neighbours. The project is called ’LinkIng and QUantifying the Impacts of climate change on inlanD ICE, snow cover, and permafrost on water resources and society in vulnerable regions’ (LIQUIDICE).

Learn more about LIQUIDICE at eng.geus.dk

Winter subglacial meltwater detected in a Greenland fjord

Researchers recently published a study in Nature Geoscience describing how they used new drone technology to measure Greenland’s glacier fronts in winter for the first time and found that there is an outflow of freshwater at the glacier fronts in winter.

Learn more about the study at eng.geus.dk

Read the research article ’Winter subglacial meltwater detected in a Greenland fjord’ at nature.com

PROMICE and GC-Net

Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet (PROMICE) and Greenland Climate Network (GC-Net) are operated by The Department of Glaciology and Climate at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) in collaboration with DTU Space and Asiaq.

Together, the two monitoring programmes deliver data about the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet in near real-time.

See the data and learn more at promice.org

Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring

Greenland Ecosystem Monitoring (GEM) is an integrated monitoring and long-term research programme on ecosystems and climate change effects and feedbacks in the Arctic. The GEM Programme put around 75 scientists in the field annually to collect data on ecosystem and climate change in Greenland. The data base currently covers data from monitoring programmes from Zackenberg (1995-), Kobbefjord at Nuuk (2007-) and Disko (2017-). The well over 1000 parameters are freely available via the GEM Database.

Visit G-E-M.dk for more information.

Access the GEM Open Data website.

Signe Hillerup Larsen, researcher, and Anne Munck Solgaard, Senior researcher, on their hopes for what the Interntaional Year of Glacier's Preservation will bring about.

Pictures of glaciers in Greenland

The pictures below are free to use in relation to mentions of GEUS' research and/or World Day of Glaciers as long as it is clearly marked with 'GEUS'.