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Switzerland: Alpine glaciers are melting at record speed

2022-07-26T10:49:46.586Z


Glaciologists are already observing what climate models predicted for the coming decades: the glaciers in the Alps are shrinking dramatically. Weather balloons must climb higher than ever to find freezing.


Enlarge image

Retreat: View of the Pasterze, the largest glacier in Austria at the foot of the Grossglockner

Photo: UIG / IMAGO

August, when the Alpine glaciers regularly lose the most ice, has not yet arrived.

But the loss of glacier mass is already breaking the records that have been measured so far.

This was reported by the Reuters news agency on Tuesday, which had new measurement data from the Swiss glacier measurement network Glamos and the Université Libre de Bruxelles.

According to this, the Morteratsch glacier in the Swiss canton of Graubünden is losing five centimeters a day and is already more dissolved than at the end of an average summer.

Overall, the mass of snow and ice became almost three kilometers shorter and 200 meters thinner.

The glacier researcher Andreas Linsbauer has already had to drill new holes in the ice to attach the measuring devices - a job for which he usually arrives at the end of September at the end of the melting period.

According to the data, the nearby Silvretta glacier has shrunk by one meter more than in 1947, the largest year since measurements began in 1915.

"It's very obvious that this is an extreme season," said Linsbauer.

In July, several pictures of the catastrophic condition of the glaciers throughout the Alps were shared on social networks.

Water masses fell from the Adamello glacier in Italy.

On the Hintertux Glacier in Tyrol, which is also used for summer skiing, the ski lifts drove over a dark surface of ice, almost completely free of snow.

The physicist Martin Fierz said goodbye to the Eisental Glacier on the Arlberg in Austria.

After the deadly glacier collapse on the Marmolada in the Dolomites, leading Swiss glacier researcher Matthias Huss had already warned of a record melt in an interview with SPIEGEL.

Shortly thereafter, Huss, who also works for the glacier measuring network Glamos, saw his fears confirmed.

»The glaciers in the Alps are so completely different from what we have seen before.

I'm really concerned about the situation," he wrote on Twitter on July 17.

“The measurements taken today at the Griesgletscher show that we are even a month ahead of the previous record from 2003 with the melt.

And no improvement in sight.«

Huss now told Reuters: "I did not expect to experience such an extreme year so early in this century." Because of the climate crisis, the disappearance of most Alpine glaciers has long been predicted.

According to a 2019 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 80 percent of the ice mass will melt by the year 2100 if the earth stays on the current climate course.

But if more years like 2022 followed, it could also go much faster, said Huss.

"We are seeing model results today that were expected a few decades in the future."

Researchers from neighboring countries confirmed the dramatic decline.

In Austria, "the glaciers are snow-free up to the peaks," said the glaciologist Andrea Fischer from the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

"It's easy to imagine what the end result will be after the summer," says Marco Giardino, Vice President of the Italian Glaciological Committee: "Wide-ranging loss of glacier cover in the Italian Alps."

Freezing point only at 5184 meters altitude

Glaciers are retreating worldwide, and researchers such as glaciologist Mohd Farooq from the Indian Institute of Technology Indore also spoke of an unprecedented melt after the heat waves in spring in the Himalayas.

However, the glaciers in the European Alps are particularly at risk: At 0.3 degrees Celsius per decade, this region is warming twice as much as the global average.

In addition, the glaciers in the Alps are usually small and have a thin layer of ice.

Last winter, exceptionally little snow fell in the Alps.

The Grand Etret glacier in northwestern Italy, for example, gained just 1.30 metres, two meters less than the average for the years 2001 to 2020. Without the white snow cover that reflects sunlight into the atmosphere, the mostly dark ice masses from collected dust and dirt are missing protection from the melt.

Added to this is the heat.

Like other European countries, Switzerland is experiencing exceptionally high temperatures this summer.

The zero degree limit rose higher than ever on Monday night.

The measurement broke a 27-year-old record, MeteoSwiss, the Swiss Federal Office for Meteorology and Climatology, wrote on Twitter on Monday.

Weather balloons only determined the freezing point at an altitude of 5184 meters - well above the highest peak in the country, the Dufourspitze in the Monte Rosa massif at 4636 meters.

The previous record was measured on July 20, 1995 at 5117 meters.

Normally, the zero degree limit in summer is at 3000 to 3500 meters.

ak/Reuters/AFP

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2022-07-26

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