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Global warming: Swiss glaciers have never melted so quickly

2022-09-28T08:23:56.071Z


After a dry winter and a wave of intense summer heat, Swiss glaciers smashed all melting records in 2022.


Swiss glaciers could have almost disappeared "by the end of the century".

These impressive piles of ice “shattered” all melting records in 2022, under the dual effect of a dry winter and a wave of intense summer heat.

Three cubic kilometers of ice were lost, or 6% of the total volume of Swiss glaciers.

A loss of 2% in one year was previously considered "extreme", notes the Commission of Experts of the Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences.

"It is not possible to slow down the melting in the short term", explains doctor Matthias Huss, who is an authority on the subject and directs the Swiss network of glaciological surveys (Glamos).

If we reduce CO2 emissions and protect the climate, “this could save around 1/3 of the total volumes in Switzerland in the best case scenario”.

Otherwise the glaciers will have practically disappeared in Switzerland “by the end of the century”, according to him.

The heat absorbed by the snow

In the spring, the depth of snow in the Alps had never been so low and sand dust from the Sahara came to soil the snow.

It therefore absorbed more heat, melted faster and deprived the glaciers of their protective layer of snow from the start of summer.

The ice was then subjected to the heat wave without its usual protective shield.

At the end of the summer, a tongue of land at the junction of the Tsanfleuron glacier and that of the Scex Rouge at a little over 2,800 meters, found itself in the open air for the first time since the Roman era.

And in early July, the collapse of a huge block of the Marmolada glacier, the highest peak in the Italian Alps, left eleven dead and demonstrated the seriousness of the situation.

According to the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the melting of ice and snow is one of the ten major threats caused by global warming.

Read alsoGlobal warming: “We can still change things and observe improvements in just one generation”

The phenomenon will go on accelerating, notes the report.

“Observations show that many tongues of ice are crumbling and that islands of rocks appear in the middle of the glacier when the ice is not very thick.

So many processes that further accelerate degradation”.

"These developments also show the importance of glaciers during hot and dry years for the supply of water and energy", explain the experts.

A crucial point for a country where hydroelectricity provides more than 60% of the country's total energy production.

The melting of glaciers also has less expected consequences.

It happens more and more frequently that hikers make a macabre discovery, the bodies being freed from the ice of which they were prisoners sometimes for decades or even centuries.

It can also be a boon for archaeologists who suddenly have access to objects that are thousands of years old.

Source: leparis

All life articles on 2022-09-28

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