ZURICH: Swiss glaciers melted at an above-average price in 2024 as a blistering sizzling summer time thawed by way of plentiful snowfall, monitoring physique GLAMOS stated on Tuesday (Oct 1).
Earlier this yr, glaciologists had celebrated heavy winter and spring snow dumps within the Alps, hoping this may sign a halt to years of hefty declines or perhaps a reversal of losses.
However with common August temperatures a number of levels above freezing even on the 3,571m excessive Jungfraujoch station perched above the Aletsch Glacier, scientists measured document ice losses throughout the nation that month.
General, GLAMOS stated Swiss glaciers misplaced 2.5 per cent of their quantity this yr which was above the common of the previous decade.
“It’s worrying to me that regardless of the right yr we really had for glaciers, with the snow-rich winter and the slightly cool and wet spring, it was nonetheless not sufficient,” stated Matthias Huss, Director of GLAMOS.
“If the pattern continues that we have now seen on this yr, this will likely be a catastrophe for Swiss glaciers,” he added.
One of many elements that accelerated the losses this yr was mud from the Sahara, the report stated. This offers ice sheets a brown or rosy hue which inhibits their capability to replicate daylight again into the environment.
Footage posted by Huss on social media throughout knowledge assortment journeys in latest weeks confirmed muddy streams snaking by way of ice sheets so skinny that rocks and gravel protruded.
“There may be actually a relation you construct up with the location, with the ice, and it hurts a bit to see how the rocks are merely taking up,” he informed Reuters earlier this month, whereas measuring ice on the Pers Glacier in japanese Switzerland.
