The Monte Perdido glacier is located in the Ordesa National Park, located in the Pyrenees, at an altitude of between 2,700 and 3,250 meters,
for 2,000 years
.
Witness of environmental variations, it has withstood warm seasons and has lost the ice accumulated in the last six in a century.
However, its decades are numbered, because according to experts
it will not be able to withstand the
current
climate change
, which will end it in about 20 or 30 years.
It is an example of the current situation of the
Pyrenean Glaciers
, protected by law and declared a natural monument, which have gone from occupying 2,060 hectares in 1850 to 210 today, and from 52 ice masses to only 19. A study by Pyrenean Institute of Ecology (IPE), belonging to the Higher Council for Scientific Research, has made it possible to know the age of the Monte Perdido glacier and its evolution, thanks to several dates made with the
carbon 14 technique
on organic remains found in the ice.
The objective of the researchers was to know if in the last millennia the glacier experienced some similar retreat period or if it could disappear in warm times. They have concluded that the Monte Perdido glacier has been present for
the last 2,000 years
. It resisted during the Roman period and the Middle Ages, underwent a stage of fusion due to the increase in temperatures and droughts between the 10th and 14th centuries, during the so-called Medieval Climate Anomaly. It grew from the 15th to the 19th century, in the Little Ice Age, due to low temperatures and heavy snowfall.
One of the IPE research teams carried out
the pioneering mission
of studying and knowing the age of this glacial, from which they extracted a column of ice between 10 and 15 meters high. They sought to "decipher" the messages trapped in the ice and thus
reconstruct the climate
from the moment of the glacier's formation.
The research, carried out within the framework of the
Explora Paleoice
project
, has been directed by
Ana Moreno Caballud
, a geologist at said institute, in collaboration with other specialists.
The case of a southern European glacier that survived the warm Roman and medieval periods, but is disappearing with recent warming,
is the title of the report of this research, published in the journal
La Criosfera
of the European Union of Geoscience
.
EXCEPTIONAL CURRENT CLIMATE CHANGE
Moreno has pointed out that the results demonstrate the "
exceptionality" of climate change
, at least in the last 2,000 years. The Monte Perdido glacier has seen how the ice accumulated in the
last 600 years
has melted in a century
, during the cold stage of the Little Ice Age.
Geochemical analyzes have confirmed the
enormous loss
, as the human activity indicators that have been analyzed (soot, mercury or lead, partly derived from gasoline) are at much lower than expected values at the top of the sequence. of ice. The researchers have been able to
"give a temporal context"
, according to Moreno, "we saw that the glaciers were disappearing, but we did not know if we had ice only 100 years ago or more."
To date it, in addition to the carbon 14 analyzes, values of elements present have been compared. "We know that there is evidence of lead in the atmosphere for the last 20 or 30 years and mercury for 300 years. These indicators are not found in the glacier, they are in much lower quantities than would be expected if we had recent ice," he said. the researcher. And he has specified:
"It is as if someone had eaten the last 600 years of ice
.
"
The study concludes that the current warming in the Pyrenees is faster and more intense than that which occurred in the previous warm phases of the last 2,000 years;
therefore "it is reasonable" to expect the disappearance of the frozen mass of Monte Perdido and other glaciers in the next two or three decades.
It is a threat "increasingly in the short term,"
warns the author of the study.
THE SLOW DISAPPEARANCE OF THE GLACIERS
Glaciers, sentinels of climate change, are going through a slow, silent and unstoppable retreat on the
way to their disappearance
. In 1850 there were 52 glaciers in the Pyrenees with an area of 2,060 hectares; in 1984 there were 39, with 810 hectares, and in 2008, there were 22 glaciers occupying 306 hectares. The estimate, updated in 2016 by several Spanish universities and the IPE, based on satellite images and observations on the ground,
lowered the data to 19 frozen masses and 242 has.
This is
an 88% setback
from the end of the Little Ice Age, in the mid-19th century. The new 2020 review confirmed an accelerated decline, with only 210 hectares left, 13% less than four years ago. An example of this progressive disappearance is the Monte Perdido glacier, in which since 2011 an exhaustive monitoring has been carried out. Losses have been noted almost every year, such as the 2.3 meters thick that disappeared in 2017. In some isolated winter it has increased, but
that does not compensate for the
seven meters thick
retreat
in almost a decade.
In 2016 it had an area of 37.8 hectares, ten less than in 1981. The data show that the glacier has lost an average of five meters in thickness, although in some points it is 14 meters less;
in general it goes back one meter a year.
This is in addition to previous measurements, which show a
global loss of about 50 meters
between 1980 and 2010.
Another glacier monitored for observation is
the Maladeta
glacier
, in the Benasque valley.
Experts estimate that, in the most pessimistic scenario, within 20 or 30 years it will have disappeared, according to an evolution model that takes into account different possibilities of
climate change up to the year 2100
.
According to the
Master Plan for the Use and Management of the Natural Monuments of the Pyrenean Glaciers
,
of eight
mountain ranges that had ice in the Pyrenees,
only four remain
.
In three decades, the Coronas glacier has reduced three-quarters of its surface and has become a glacier;
that of the Balaitus massif, which in 1983 had an area of 23 hectares, has almost disappeared and that of the Maladeta has been divided in two.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
Climate change
science
Science and Health
Environment
Climate Crisis Race of Promises at Biden Climate Summit
Climate changeThe rise in sea level will push back the beaches of the Balearic Islands by 50 meters
Climate crisis Nobel climate summit concludes with call to action in post-Covid society
See links of interest
Coronavirus
Work calendar
Home THE WORLD TODAY
Chelsea - Real Madrid, live
Mutua Madrid Open: Rafa Nadal - Alexei Popyrin