The summer that has just ended has melted it Schneeferner southonce a large glacier on the south side of the Zugspitze, in the Bavarian Alps. Instead of a white tongue, almost only dark remnants remained. New measurements in mid-September showed that the thickness of the Ice at most detection points it does not reach two meters. And at the deepest it is already less than six meters compared to about ten in 2018. The total area of the mass is Ice it has halved compared to four years ago and what remains will disappear completely within the next two years. L’Bavarian Academy of Sciences indicated that due to the small thickness no more ice movement is to be expected and therefore also Southern Schneeferner it is no more than one to consider glacier autonomous. That measurements which started there in 1892 and has been going since the mid-20th temperatures last spring’s high levels, hot summer, and Saharan sands expanding like a film and absorbing the sun’s energy accelerated the melting of the ice.
A phenomenon that has also led to a volume loss of over 6% Swiss glacier only this year, as communicated by theSwiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT), quantifies in about 3 cubic meters of ice less. Previously, a decline of 2% per year was considered an extreme phenomenon. Especially small glaciers like that Pizol glacier or the Vadret dal Corvatsch they have practically disappeared. in the Engadine and in southern Valais, three thousand meters above sea level, a four to six meter thick sheet of ice melted. The resolution of tongues of ice and the appearance of rocky islands amidst already thinned strata further accelerates theirs Disappearall the more made possible by the lower snowfall at higher altitudes.
THE glacier are also extremely important water reservesalso necessary for feeding hydroelectric power plants. As availability decreases, the risks of bilateral conflicts. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had already predicted in an extraordinary 2019 report on the oceans and the global presence of ice and snow that the progressive global warming by the end of the century about 80% of the masses of glaciers at low altitude as in the Alps and in Scandinavia.
in the Germany there are already only four left, all on the Zugspitze, but they too are threatened with dissolution. I am Schneeferner north, the Watzmann Glacierthe blue ice the Höllentalferner. That Watzmannglatscher it hardly moves anymore and is already at the point where science can no longer be considered an autonomous glacier. Only theHöllentalferner on the north side of Zugspitze it could last another ten or fifteen years, it is in the shade and in winter it is subject to many avalanches. THE glacier they are in fact great masses of fresh snow, snowfields and ice, mostly sliding downhill from the tops of the mountains; only the parts that are at least for the most part in motion are geologically referred to as glaciers.
It took place on September 27th Geneva the fifty-seventh session of the IPCC: The sixth report of the first working group summarizing the state of research on climate change “Climate change 2021: the physical science basis”, already explained in August 2021, among other things, that it is about the human factor through the years to determine Ninety the retreat of glaciers around the world. The global nature of their take off in sync over the years Fifty has no precedent, at least in the last two thousand years. It will take place from November 6th to 18th Sharm El Sheikh the twenty-seventh conference of the United Nations on climate change, COP 27, all states are called upon to make up for the delays in order to reverse a trend that has already started before it is too late.