Alps' Glaciers Are Retreating Rapidly
By Countercurrents.org
20 September, 2012
Countercurrents.org
The Alps ' glaciers are in retreat at an alarming rate due to rising temperatures. Scientists opine: this is the result of global warming. This has implication on agriculture, industry and human habitation.
Nick Squires reported in Christian Science Monitor on September 17, 2012 [1]:
In August, Italy sweltered through one of the hottest summers on record. It was one of the warmest since record keeping began. Concerns began to arise about Italy 's rapidly dwindling glaciers and the threat posed by global warming. Across the Alps – not just in Italy but in neighboring Austria , Switzerland , and France – glaciers are in retreat at an alarming rate due to rising temperatures.
“In the worst case scenario, by the end of the century glaciers in the Alps will be reduced to five to ten percent of what we have now,” says Michael Zemp, a scientist with the World Glacier Monitoring Service
Mountaineers and hikers are seeing more avalanches and rock falls as the morphology of the Alps changes.
When a large iron cross tumbled from its pedestal on the summit of the Dolomites' highest peak in earlier September, 2012, its collapse was blamed on its rock base fracturing as a result of melting permafrost.
Four days later, mountain climbers in Austria removed a similar cross from the 3,600-meter high Grossvenediger peak because they feared it too had become dangerously unstable.
More than half of the ice-covered area of the Alps has disappeared since 1850, the end of a cold spell known as the Little Ice Age.
In the last 120 years, the Alps have undergone an “exceptionally high temperature increase of around two degrees centigrade,” according to the European Topic Center on Air and Climate Change, a consortium of European environmental institutes.
But even over the last few decades, there are clear changes to the Alps .
In the Austrian Tirol, some glaciers have retreated seven meters in the last decade.
In Switzerland , skiers used to be able ski on four glaciers in the summer – now that number has dwindled to two.
In Italy 's Selvio national park in the Dolomites, glaciers have shrunk by up to 40 percent in the last 50 years.
At the other end of the Alpine range, in the Val d'Aosta region close to France , glaciers have been reduced in size by 27 per cent in the last three decades.
There will be serious implications for agriculture, industry, and human habitation, as well as tourism activities such as skiing.
Glaciers currently release their melt water during the summer, when it is most needed. That crucial supply will be drastically reduced as the ice masses disappear, affecting farming as well as industrial activity.
Melting glaciers can also lead to natural hazards – new lakes form, but can burst with no warning, threatening towns and villages in the valleys below.
While this summer was “an exceptional event”, it only exacerbated a trend that was already well underway, Guglielmina Diolaiuti, the head of the scientific committee of the Italian Alpine Club, told AKI , an Italian news agency.
Italian scientists have found that in the last few decades, the altitude at which glaciers can form has marched up the mountains by around 100 meters (330 ft.).
Saving the glaciers
Extreme measures are being taken to preserve Europe 's glaciers, including covering them with huge tarpaulins which deflect the sun's rays.
They have had some success – at Presena in northern Italy , 90,000 square meters of sheeting have reduced the rate at which a glacier is melting by up to 70 percent.
Similar measures are being mooted for a landmark peak in the Dolomites called La Marmolada.
But the tarpaulins are expensive, as well as being unsightly, and scientists say they are hardly sustainable in the long-term.
So can Europe 's glaciers be saved? “It depends on us as a society,” says Dr. Zemp, who is based at Zurich University in Switzerland .
Man-made climate change, caused by greenhouse gases, needs to be halted as soon as possible, he says. “But even if we freeze climate change to its present rate, the effect will be delayed and glaciers will still reduce by 10 to 30 per cent by the end of the century. That's the most optimistic scenario. So far we have seen no progress in stopping climate change. It's not hopeless, but we need action right now.”
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