But at the Grand Etret glacier in northwest Italy, only 1.3m of snow had accumulated during this past winter – 2m less than the annual average for the 20 years up to 2020.
This year’s Alpine ice losses, registered even before the biggest melt month of August, surprised scientists to some extent, as many of the glaciers had already lost their lower-lying snouts. Because they had retreated up the mountain, where temperatures are cooler, scientists thought they should have been better protected.
“You can easily imagine the final results after summer will be … extensive loss of glacier coverage in the Italian Alps,” said Marco Giardino, vice president of the Italian Glaciological Committee.
Data shared exclusively with Reuters shows that Morteratsch is now shedding about 5cm a day and is already in a worse state than it would normally be at the end of an average summer, according to data from GLAMOS and the Universite libre de Bruxelles.
The nearby Silvretta Glacier has lost about 1m more than at the same point in 1947 – the worst year in its database stretching back to 1915.
HIMALAYAN THAW
Himalayan glaciers are also on track for a record ice loss year, scientists told Reuters. When the summer monsoon season arrived in the Kashmir region, for example, many glaciers had already been shrunk drastically, with their snowlines starting high up the mountain, after a March to May heatwave marked by temperatures above 48 degree Celsius in northern India.
An early June expedition in India’s Himachal Pradesh found that the Chhota Shigri Glacier had lost much of its snow cover. “The highest temperature in over a century in March through May clearly had its impacts,” said glaciologist Mohd Farooq Azam at the Indian Institute of Technology Indore.
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