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After this year’s hot summer, geologists discovered that the
simple stakes used as benchmarks to measure the glacier’s
retraction each year are now buried under rockslides and debris
that have made the terrain too unsteady for future in-person
visits.
The Lombardy Glaciological Service said Monday that it will now
use drone imagery and remote sensing to keep track of the
ongoing shrinkage.
Geologists say that the Ventina glacier has already lost 1.7
kilometers (1 mile) in length since the first measuring
benchmarks were positioned at the front of the glacier in 1895.
The melting has accelerated in recent years, with the glacier
losing 431 meters (471 yards) in the last 10 years, nearly half
of that since 2021, the service said. It's another example of
how accelerating global warming is melting and shrinking
Europe’s glaciers, causing a host of environmental and other
impacts.
“While we could still hope until the 1980s that there would be
normal cycles (of retraction) or at least a contained
retraction, in the last 40 years something truly striking has
occurred,” said Andrea Toffaletti, a member of the Lombardy
Glaciological Service.
Italy’s mountain glaciers, which are found throughout the Alps
and Dolomites in the north and along the central Apennines, have
been receding for years, thanks to inadequate snowfall in the
winter and record-setting hot summers. Glaciers always melt some
in summer, with the runoff fueling mountain streams and rivers.
But the hot summers are “no longer able to guarantee the
survival of the winter snowpack,” that keeps the glacier intact,
Toffaletti said.
“In order to regenerate and remain in balance, a certain amount
of residual snow from the winter must remain on the glacier's
surface at the end of the summer. And this is happening less and
less frequently,” said Toffaletti.
According to the Lombardy service, the Alps represent a climate
hotspot, recording double the global average of temperature
increases since pre-industrial times, resulting in the loss of
over 64% of the volume of Alpine glaciers.
In February, the journal Nature reported on a study showing the
world’s glaciers lost ice at the rate of about 255 billion tons
(231 billion metric tons) annually from 2000 to 2011, but that
quickened to about 346 billion tons (314 billion metric tons)
annually over about the next decade.
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