2024-10-02 12:40:20
Switzerland’s glaciers are melting in 2024 at a faster-than-average rate as a hot summer thaws what has been built up by heavy snowfall, Reuters and AFP reported, citing a new report.
The study was carried out by the Swiss Glaciological Research Network (Glamos), BTA reported.
Earlier this year, experts expressed hope that a severe winter and spring snowfall in the Alps could halt years of severe temperature decline, or even reverse the trend. However, scientists measured record values across the country this month.
Switzerland’s glaciers have lost 2.5 percent of their volume this year, above the average for the past decade.
“It is disturbing to me that despite a perfect year for the glaciers, with a snow-rich winter, a cooler and rainier spring. This is still not enough,” says Matthias Huss, director of Glamos. “If the trend we have seen this year continues, it will be a disaster for the Swiss glaciers,” he added.
One of the factors that accelerated losses that year was dust from the Sahara, the report said. This gives the ice sheets a brown or pink hue that interferes with their ability to reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere.
Photos posted by Huss on social media during fact-finding trips in recent weeks show mudflows snaking through ice sheets so thin that rocks and gravel are visible.
“There’s really a connection you build with the place, with the ice, and it’s a bit painful to see that,” he told Reuters earlier this month while exploring the Pers Glacier in eastern Switzerland.
More than half of the glaciers in the Alps are in Switzerland, where temperatures are rising about twice as fast as those globally due to climate change, Reuters notes.