Glaciers in Bavaria: The end of the ice – Bavaria

The northern Schneeferner is not literally blank these days, its ice is too interspersed with dust and sand. The highest glacier in Germany on the Zugspitzplatt has not had a protective layer of snow since the beginning of August. This means he broke out four weeks earlier than in previous years. The experts from the Schneefernerhaus environmental research station attribute this to a winter with little snow and a warm spring – and to the dust from the Sahara that also blew in March. It has darkened the snow and made it melt all the faster, just as the darker ice of the glacier now absorbs more heat than the lighter snow would otherwise have done. And so, with all five glaciers, things are going much faster than before.

Open detailed view

Open detailed view

“2022 will go down as a record year, that’s for sure,” says glaciologist Olaf Eisen. “The only question is: How much worse will it be than in the previous record year 2003?” Last year, a panel of experts approved Bavaria’s glaciers for only ten instead of the previous 30 years – but now the end could come even faster.

The Südliche Schneeferner on the Zugspitze is only a miserable heap anyway. “It could even be that by the end of the year it will already be over, there is almost nothing left,” says Christoph Mayer from the Academy of Sciences. He and other experts blame the high temperatures and, above all, the Sahara dust in March for the particularly early and rapid decline. “We are now in a state that normally occurs at the end of summer just before the first snowfall,” says glacier researcher Eisen.

The blue ice and the Watzmann glacier in the Berchtesgaden Alps and the Höllentalferner on the Zugspitze are also disappearing accordingly. Although it is lower than the Northern and Southern Schneeferner, it is more shady. He will probably be the last soon.