A hiker walks on a path near Courmayeur in the Alps in northwestern Italy, where glaciers are melting.
- The ice in central Italy began to shrink and split into glaciers. As an effort to combat climate change, this continues unabated in Europe.
- This summer, melting glaciers seemed to pose a challenge for scientists on the side of the Mont Blanc plot in Italy.
- These glaciers-which are said to be about 2,700 meters above sea level-are collapsing due to rising temperatures and are threatening nearby valleys.
The Calderone ice sheet in central Italy once claimed to be the southernmost glacier in Europe-before it shrank and split into greatly reduced glaciers.
As climate change makes the global temperature higher and higher, glaciers may disappear completely in the geological record book.
The Calderone Glacier is located in a deep valley in Gran Sasso d’Italia, a massif in the Apennines. It first split 20 years ago.
When the Corral del Veleta glacier in Spain’s Sierra Nevada melted in the early 20th century, it became the southernmost glacier in Europe.
But since then, it has been shrinking rapidly: according to a 2010 study in the Journal of Glaciology, its volume decreased by about 90% between 1916 and 1990.
“This is the southernmost glacier in Europe, which is why it is an icon and symbol, but now it is getting smaller,” glaciologist Massimo Frezotti told AFP.
“We estimate that it may disappear in the next 10-20 years,” said Frezzotti, chairman of the Italian Commission for Glaciology.
He said that the melting season—usually summer, when the glacier loses more mass than it gains—actually “disappears because of the increase in temperature”.
He says:
The duration of the melting season is longer, the rainfall remains the same, but the amount of snowfall decreases, and of course the mass balance of the glacier is getting smaller and smaller.
Another member of the team, Massimo Pecci, has been studying the Calderone Glacier for the past 25 years.
“Since 2000, we have been witnessing a gradual decrease in thickness and area, and further splitting into smaller glaciers,” Page said.
Compared with the levels in the mid-19th century, global warming caused by human activities—mainly the burning of fossil fuels—has pushed the Earth’s average surface temperature by 1.1 degrees Celsius.
Most of the growth has occurred in the past 50 years.
Page said: “We don’t yet know how the story will end… I hope it won’t end.”
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