climate crisis
Glaciologist: Alpine glaciers are melting faster
The Gurgler Ferner in the Oetztal Alps in Austria. photo
© Ute Wessels/dpa
With global warming, glaciers are shrinking continuously. This is fatal – but if humanity manages to remove CO2 from the atmosphere again, there is reason for hope.
While the glaciers used to recede continuously, now – after extreme years like 2022 – holes are appearing in the glacier tongues. “If the process continues like this, there could be no glacier left in Ötztal in 30 years.” The Ötztal is an area in Tyrol that is popular with mountaineers.
Don’t stop, but slow down
Iron gives the Alpine glaciers at altitudes of 4,000 or 4,500 meters about 100 more years before they are likely to have largely disappeared. The melting of the glaciers cannot be stopped at the moment, but it can be mitigated, according to the expert from the Alfred Wegener Institute at the Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research.
Even if the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere were to remain stable – which it is not – glaciers around the world would lose 50 percent of their mass by the year 2100. But if CO2 emissions continue at current levels, there is a risk a loss of 80 to 90 percent. So if it were possible to reduce CO2 emissions to zero, the retreat of the glaciers could be reduced, according to Eisen.
Glaciers can also grow again
If it were even possible to remove the CO2 from the atmosphere in the long term, the glaciers could grow again. “But that’s not technically possible at the moment and it probably won’t be possible in the next 20 years either.”
That’s why the glaciology professor says clearly: “We have to get out of fossil fuels so that we can stop the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere and reduce it again in the long term. If we start doing this in 2050, it will be too late for the glaciers.”
There are four glaciers in Germany: Northern Schneeferner and Höllentalferner on the Zugspitze, and Watzmanngletscher and Blaueis in the Berchtesgaden Alps. The southern Schneeferner was only deprived of its status as a glacier last autumn. Due to its strong loss of ice mass, it probably no longer flows, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences had announced.