Germany has permanently lost a glacier in the Alps
The Bavarian Academy of Sciences pronounced the Schneeferner dead on Monday, after melting at an accelerated rate during this summer.
White ice was lightly present north of the Schneeferner in August 2022.
KEYSTONE
The southern part of the Schneeferner glacier in the Bavarian Alps melted at an accelerated rate during this particularly hot summer and permanently lost its glacier status, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences announced on Monday.
The thickness of the ice no longer even reaches 2 meters in many places, and less than 6 meters in the deepest places, according to ground-penetrating radar measurements carried out in September. In 2018, she was still 10 meters, recalls the academy in a press release.
“We deduce that the rest of the ice will have completely melted within a year or two,” she adds. “At the same time, the surface of the glacier has shrunk to less than 1 hectare, which is about half as much as in 2018”.
There therefore remain officially four sites still fulfilling the criteria for glaciers in Bavaria: the northern part of the Schneeferner, the Höllentalferner, on the famous Zugspitze massif (2,962 m above sea level) and the glaciers of Watzmann (2,713 m) and Blaueis ( 2,607 m), on the Berchtesgarden massif.
Melting faster than expected
A report released two years ago by the regional government warned of a faster-than-expected melting of glaciers, the last of which could disappear completely within a decade, while earlier estimates had put the fateful date at 2050 .
“Climate change is hitting the Bavarian glaciers hard,” local Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber said at the time.
The melting of glaciers in the Alps and elsewhere in the world, attributed to global warming, has been closely monitored since the early 2000s.
Two years ago, a study published in the journal Nature found that their rapid melting over the past 20 years now contributes to more than 20% of sea level rise.
ATS
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