Climate change and global warming is causing many glaciers to retreat year after year. Having the hottest summer on record in 2024 hasn’t helped either. A study estimates that Salzburg’s glaciers will completely melt within 10 to 15 years.
Glacier researchers and hydrologists are currently monitoring the Salzburg glaciers (Austria). Although detailed data and measurement results are not yet available, it is clear that glaciers They have lost mass and size again this year.
Bernhard Zagel, a glacier researcher at the University of Salzburg, describes this mass loss:
“And we have irradiation like thatWith eight or nine hours of sun, the glacier loses about ten centimeters in height. It’s huge, because ten centimeters of ice are lost each year. To compensate for it, it would take ten meters of fresh snowwhich would then turn into ice.”
According to Zagel, the heavy snowfall which fell in the Austrian Tauern Mountains until spring and early summer They barely served to protect the glaciers. He stressed that the amount of melting at altitudes such as 3,000 meters is at an incredible level.
The culprit of this melting: The greenhouse effect
“Thirty years ago, the Sonnblickkees ice lake was being created. Where there is now bare rock, then there was ice ten meters thick; today the edge of the glacier is 600 meters. And if you ask me the cause, yes it’s the greenhouse effectI’d actually like to turn it around and say that it’s getting harder and harder to prove that it’s not the greenhouse effect.”
The Stubacher Sonnblickkees, located at 2,700 meters above sea level, has lost 45 million cubic meters of ice in the last 25 yearswhich means half its mass.
The researchers assume that Within ten years no glacier will be seen in the area which also implies a change in the Austrian ecosystem.
