The Earth is warming up, and its ice is melting.
For years, images of polar bears facing the decrepitude of their environment have warned us: the melting of the ice threatens.
Rising sea levels, moving borders, rock collapses, floods... Its consequences are already visible, and you don't need to go to Antarctica to see it.
In Europe, extreme temperatures in recent weeks have resulted in faster and earlier melting of snowpacks in alpine glaciers, which are heading towards a summer melt not seen since monitoring began 60 years ago. , according to data consulted by the Reuters agency and the testimonies of researchers.
In Pakistan, at the gates of the Himalayas, or even in Alaska, the signs that the melting of the ice is accelerating are everywhere.
And more and more frequent disasters.
>> To read also: "In Antarctica, the days of the 'glacier of the Apocalypse' are numbered"
Water infiltrations and rockfalls
After a winter with little snow, the Alps have already experienced two early heat waves in June and July.
At the most recent date, the 0°C isotherm (fictitious line at which the temperature is zero) was established at an altitude of 5,184 meters in Switzerland – i.e. higher than the summit of Mont Blanc – so that it is normally between 3,000 and 3,500 meters in summer.
While the melting of glaciers poses a global threat due to global warming, those in the Alps are particularly vulnerable, due to their smaller size and thinner thickness.
On July 3, the Italian Marmolada glacier – the highest point in the Dolomites, and one of the most popular hiking routes in Italy – collapsed at one of the peaks of the massif, Punta Rocca. , located at 3,309 meters above sea level.
The exceptionally high temperatures of recent weeks have contributed to accelerating the melting of permafrost, the "cement" of the mountain.
At least two parties were on the glacier at the time of the collapse.
Result: eleven dead.
A helicopter takes part in a search and rescue operation after part of the Marmolada glacier in the Italian Alps collapsed on July 6, 2022. © Guglielmo Mangiapane, Reuters
In France, the Glaciology Laboratory closely monitors a large number of glaciers.
"Many glacial tongues do not show characteristics of imminent collapse, but a lot of water passes through the glaciers due to summer melting", explained on BFMTV Sylvain Coutterand, geomorphologist and glaciologist, author of the "Atlas of disappeared glaciers " (ed. Paulsen).
"Glacial tongues slide faster and if they are thinned, they are less resistant to the stresses that the glacier receives on the bedrock, and can therefore rupture."
Alpine glaciers shrinking to a trickle
In Switzerland, the Morteratsch glacier no longer looks like the illustrations in tourist guides for the region.
The long white tongue that descended over a large part of the valley has receded about three kilometers in its length, and the extent of the ice has reduced by about 200 meters in its width.
According to data from Glamos, the network of Swiss glaciological surveys and the Free University of Brussels, this glacier is now losing five centimeters in thickness per day and has already melted more than at the end of a usual summer.
With a temperature rise of about 0.3°C per decade, warming in Europe is almost twice as fast as the global average.
An observation which makes specialists fear that the alpine glaciers will disappear sooner than expected, which is not excluded if the years to come are marked by repeated heat waves, warns Matthias Huss, director of Glamos.
“Emergency” drilling of stakes at #Pers #glacier in the #Engadin last week.
Even though the scenery is majestic as always, it is frightening how little snow we found on the glacier.
In July, there should be more snow here, but we measured the highest rates of ice loss.@ice_vub
— GLAMOS (@glamos_ch) July 25, 2022
In a special report published in 2019, the IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) warned that the glaciers of the Alps will have lost more than 80% of their current mass by 2100 and that many of them are already doomed to disappear, regardless of the measures that could be taken to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Between Italy and Switzerland, the border melts
In Austria, "the glaciers are now bare to the summits", describes Andrea Fischer, glaciologist from the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
“We can easily imagine the result at the end of the summer (…) massive losses of glacier cover in the Italian Alps”, observes for his part Marco Giardino, vice-president of the Italian Glaciological Committee.
This melting of the glaciers goes so far as to move the Italian-Swiss border.
Following the line of separation of the waters whose flow towards the north marks the Swiss territory, and that towards the south, Italy, the border has gradually been modified by the melting of the Theodule glacier.
It lost nearly a quarter of its mass between 1973 and 2010, giving way to rock and forcing the two neighbors to redraw a few dozen meters of their border.
The question is not trivial because, in this place, is the Matterhorn Guides refuge, originally built in Italy.
However, with the displacement of the border on the glacier, two thirds of the hut, perched at 3,480 meters above sea level, are now in Switzerland.
A problem at the origin of intense diplomatic negotiations between the two States.
>> To see: "In pictures: droughts, fires and melting glaciers hit Italy"
In Pakistan, glacial lakes and floods
The melting of glaciers is also a major risk of flooding, flooding, destroyed homes and a risk to life.
Indeed, rising global temperatures linked to climate change are causing glaciers to melt rapidly, creating thousands of glacial lakes.
This is particularly the case in Pakistan, a country with thousands of glaciers located in the foothills of the Himalayas, which has recently suffered the brunt of the consequences of global warming.
In the northeast of the country, a major flood due to the melting ice ravaged the village of Hassanabad.
A partially collapsed bridge due to flash floods created after a glacial lake exploded, in the village of Hassanabad, northeastern Pakistan, May 7, 2022. © AFP
The flood - which came as a heat wave gripped South Asia in May - destroyed nine houses in the village and damaged half a dozen others.
The water also washed away two small hydroelectric plants and a bridge that connected the isolated community to the outside world.
Pakistan is home to over 7,000 glaciers.
That's more than anywhere else on the planet, outside the poles.
Pakistan's government says all 33 glacial lakes - all located in the Himalayan, Hindu Kush and Karakoram mountain ranges, which intersect in Pakistan - are at risk of bursting and releasing millions of cubic meters of water. water and debris in just a few hours.
As was the case in May in Hassanabad.
This year, at least 16 floods of glacial lakes linked to heat waves have already occurred, compared to an average of five or six per year, the Pakistani government also claimed after the Hassanabad disaster.
And everywhere the sea rises
The melting has accelerated since 2015 and no region is spared, but the phenomenon particularly affects the glaciers of Alaska, the Alps and Iceland.
In total, melting contributes more than 20% to sea level rise and could have disastrous consequences for water supply and agriculture during arid periods.
“Glaciers distinct from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are rapidly shrinking, altering regional hydrology, rising global sea levels and increasing natural hazards,” warns a study in the journal Nature in 2021.
Between 2000 and 2019, glaciers lost 267 billion tons of ice per year.
A mass loss 47% greater than that of the Greenland ice sheet, and more than twice that of the Antarctic ice sheet.
A mass of ice breaks off from the Apusiajik Glacier, near Kulusuk, on the southeastern shore of Greenland.
© Jonathan Nackstrand, AFP
With AFP and Reuters
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