The glaciers in the eastern Alps continue to retreat.
This emerges from the glacier report of the Austrian Alpine Club, which was presented on Friday in Innsbruck.
According to this, the glaciers lost an average of eleven meters in length between autumn 2020 and autumn 2021.
In the same period of the previous year, they had lost an average of 15 meters.
"The retreat was significantly less than in previous years," says Gerhard Lieb from the Institute for Geography and Spatial Research at the University of Graz.
But that is just a small fluctuation in the long-term trend.
According to the measured values, the glaciers in the Eastern Alps benefited particularly from the cool and snowy May last year.
“There was heavy snow cover on the glaciers well into the summer.
The white snow reflects the radiation.
As a result, less ice has melted.”
Glaciers have been retreating around the world since 1850.
The Pasterze on the Großglockner, which has lost a total of 2.4 kilometers in length since the mid-19th century, lost a further 42.7 meters last year.
According to the glacier report, the Schlatenkees in the Venice Group in East Tyrol performed the worst last year - it retreated 54.5 meters.
"It is noticeable that the large alpine glaciers are losing length much more than the average," says Andreas Kellerer-Pirklbauer from the University of Graz, who heads the Alpine Association's glacier measurement service with Gerhard Lieb.
In recent years, researchers have increasingly observed that the glacial ice is sinking.
"Circular collapse structures and areas of water are formed, which become larger," says Kellerer-Pirklbauer.
The snow situation could have a particularly dramatic effect last winter, when only 15 percent of the average monthly precipitation fell.
In addition, this winter was particularly windy.
"The snow, which was dry in midwinter, was transported higher as a result, so the bare ice on the glacier tongues is now partially visible," says Andrea Fischer, glaciologist at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
The Saharan dust, which was deposited on the snow cover in the Alps in mid-March, also has a negative effect.
The darker surface absorbs the sun's energy particularly well, which in turn increases melting.
A lack of winter snow has drastic effects on the glaciers.
Once the snow cover has melted, the glaciers lose ten to twenty centimeters of ice thickness per day.
"Theoretically, melting could start as early as May on the bare tongues," says Andrea Fischer.
“The worst-case scenario would be a dry April and a warm summer, with precipitation falling as rain on the glaciers.
Then the duration of the ice melt will be much longer than in the previous extreme years of 2003 and 2015.”
However, the scientist is not worried about a single extreme year.
The overall unfavorable initial situation of the glaciers, whose ice surface has darkened in recent years and which have also lost a great deal of mass in the past two decades, is problematic.
The prospects are bad overall.
Wie außergewöhnlich die Situation auf den Gletschern ist, können Bergsteiger in den Westalpen erleben. In Chamonix (Frankreich) warnten die Bergretter jetzt vor einer Besteigung des Mont Blanc, des mit 4808 Metern höchsten Bergs der Alpen. Der Aufstieg über die Grands-Mulets-Hütte sei wegen des schlechten Gletscherzustands nicht möglich. Weil zu wenig Schnee liegt, kam es dort in der vergangenen Woche zu mehreren Spaltenstürzen. Auch Séracs stürzten zusammen. Die Öffnung der Hütte, wegen der Skitourensaison für den 1. April geplant, wurde verschoben. Auch die Route über Mont Blanc du Tacul und Mont Maudit sei in sehr schlechtem Zustand.