Accelerated glacial melting is not merely another indicator of the deepening climate crisis but a full-fledged emergency; along with the melting of the polar ice-sheets, this means faster sea-level rise, threatening the very survival of small islands and large swathes of the coast in the continental masses. In many geographies, glaciers are essential reservoirs of freshwater, and their shrinking will also worsen water scarcity over the long-term.

The state of glaciers and other alarming readings of the climate crisis underscore the need for the global community to accelerate climate efforts, even compensating for the US under Donald Trump, which is set to renege on its promised emission-reduction measures. This will need resolute climate leadership. Developed nations and oil economies, as major per capita and historical emitters, and China and India, as major overall emitters, will have to figure out this pathway, making concessions to each other as needed. This will require China and India to accelerate their energy transition amid growing power needs and substantially more ambitious funding of mitigation and adaptation efforts and technology transfers by the developed world. Europe will also need to recalibrate its carbon tariffs, softening these for the developing world while pushing hard against developed nations such as the US that backpedal on climate action -- difficult but necessary in a world of Trumpian weaponisation of tariffs.

With the US government reported to be weighing an exit from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change itself, and not just the Paris Agreement, the remaining parties will have to double down on collective leadership to blunt the impact. The actions and intent of the Trump administration have likely contributed to parties missing the deadline to submit updated emission reduction commitments, and this must be quickly remedied. The upcoming round of climate negotiations should work towards making commitments legally binding to prevent further renegade action like the US’s and, thereby, a collapse of the global climate consensus.