Glaciers vanishing at record rate in Alps following heatwaves

Since last winter, which brought relatively little snowfall, the Alps have sweltered through two big early summer heatwaves – including one in July marked by temperatures near 30 Celsius in the Swiss mountain village of Zermatt.

Most of the world’s mountain glaciers — remnants of the last ice age — are retreating due to climate change. But those in the European Alps are especially vulnerable because they are smaller with relatively little ice cover. Meanwhile, temperatures in the Alps are warming at around 0.3C per decade — around twice as fast as the global average.

Reuters spoke with glaciologists in Austria, France, and Italy who confirmed that glaciers there were on track for record losses. In Austria, “the glaciers are snow-free up to the summits,” said Andrea Fischer, a glaciologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. This year’s Alpine ice losses, registered even before the biggest melt month of August, surprised scientists to some extent, as many of the glaciers had already lost their lower-lying snouts. Because they had retreated up the mountain, where temperatures are cooler, scientists thought they should have been better protected.

The nearby Silvretta Glacier has lost about 1 meter more than at the same point in 1947 – the worst year in its database stretching back to 1915.Snow from the last winter season is covered with blankets on a slope beside the top station of a cablecar at Diavolezza ski area near the Alpine resort of Pontresina, Switzerland July 21, 2022. REUTERS

Above the Swiss village of Saas Fee, a path leading to a mountain hut once passed through a summer snowfield on top of the Chessjen Glacier.

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