Global warming is causing the glaciers in the Alps to melt faster and faster. By the end of this century at the latest, there should be no more glaciers in the Alps below 3500 meters, said glaciology professor Olaf Eisen from Bremen. However, he assumes – especially after the hot summer of last year – that this process will run much faster, as he told the German Press Agency.
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 CO2 content of the atmosphere remained stable – which it does not – this would mean a 50 percent loss in mass for the glaciers around the world by the year 2100. But if CO2 emissions continue as before, 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.
