One of Lombardy's most famous
glaciers, the Ghiacciaio dei Forni, has shrunk by more than 400
metres in 10 years, the 2022 Glacier Caravan organized amid the
climate crisis by the Italian Glaciological Committee and
Legambiente said Friday.
One of the biggest shrinkages took place between 2015 and 2016,
it said.
The glacier has retreated a further 40 metres this year so far
and that will be over 50 metres by the end of the year, said the
caravan.
Some 200 Alpine glaciers have disappeared since the end of 19th
century, Italian environmental group Legambiente said on August
10.
"All that is left of them is detritus and rocks," it said in
presenting the third edition of its Caravan of the Glaciers, a
roving monitoring project in the ChangeClimateChange programme
in partnership with the Italian Glaciological Committee.
The aim of the project is to verify "the dramatic regression of
glaciers because of the climate crisis".
Italy's Alpine glaciers are at their smallest extent in
centuries and a disaster on the biggest one in the Dolomites,
the Marmolada, killed 11 people when a serac collapsed on July
3.
Legambiente also said that Alpine temperatures are
growing at double the average global rate.
The atmosphere above 3,500 metres is in "total disequilibrium,"
it said.
Thermal zero was reached at 5,184 metres in the Swiss Alps at
the end of July, an unprecedented figure, the group said.
The Italian Alps saw an exceptionally mild and dry winter this
year, Legambiente said.
In many areas, it said, it did not rain or snow for 100 days.
Ground snow has been decreasing constantly over the last 10
years, and many snow-meters showed zero at the start of May.
The loss of glaciers and other human-caused climate change
phenomena has been growing steadily worse in the last few years.
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