We flew to the southern-most glaciers, ones that we’ve not seen since 2018," said Lorrey on the back of this year’s trip.
“One is now two thirds of the size it was on our last visit,” he added.
The institute said that New Zealand had experienced seven of its hottest years on record over the past decade.
Even if this trend was to be reversed, Lorrey said that many glaciers were too far gone to be saved.
“Even if we got a few cooler seasons, they wouldn’t be enough to undo the damage that’s already been done,” he said.
“That’s how stark it is, and it’s not just happening in New Zealand but all over the world.”
I’ve never been to the southern hemisphere and the geography of this kinda confuses my mind because New Zealand is east of Australia, and technically Australia’s south end is closer to the South Pole than New Zealand is, but somehow we think of Australia as a beach destination also with lots of desert-y outback, So even though on a map I can see how it’s close to Antarctica, knowing everything else I know about Australia and New Zealand, hard for me to imagine there’s glaciers involved in any of that. But okay.