Rising Temperatures Reawakening ‘Placid’ Alpine Glaciers

Environmental News from the USA: 

Glaciers in Europe’s Alps are becoming more unstable and dangerous as rising temperatures linked to climate change are reawakening what was long seen as dormant, almost fossilized sheets of ice.

Italy has been baking in an early summer heatwave and attention had been focused on the impact of drought on crops in the fertile Po Valley. read more

Further north in the Dolomites, tragedy struck on Sunday when a glacier collapsed on the Marmolada, which at more than 3,300 meters is the highest peak in the mountain range, killing at least six people.

“This summer 2022 risks being the perfect storm for glaciers,” said Giovanni Baccolo, an environmental scientist and glaciologist at Milan-Bicocca University, noting a lack of winter snow and a ferociously hot start to summer.

“Nobody could have expected a glacier-like the Marmolada to react like this,” he told Reuters. “It is a kind of climatic fossil, glaciers like the Marmolada are considered ‘placid’, they are expected to just retreat.”

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Source: Reuters