Glaciers in the Alps are melting faster than ever — and 2022 was their worst summer yet

Subject :Geography

Context-

This year Switzerland’s glaciers have lost an average of 6.2 per cent of their ice.
The new flurries of snow will form a protective blanket to shield and reflect 90 per cent of the sun’s radiation back into the atmosphere and limits the warming and melting of the ice beneath.

Saharan sand and a huge heatwave-

This year’s natural atmospheric weather patterns carried Saharan dust to Europe and blanketed the Alpine landscape.
Since dust absorbs more solar energy than snow the now orange-tinted snow melted faster.
Then a major heatwave saw temperature records smashed across Europe, with parts of the UK reaching 40° Celsius for the first time.
The last time glaciers had an extreme melt season was in 2003.
That calendar year, 3.8 per cent of glacier ice melted across Switzerland.

Alps glacier melt-

The extent to which a glacier has melted does depend on the altitude at which it is located, how steep the glacier tongue is and how heavily it is covered with debris.
In Switzerland, these glacial meltwaters are used for hydropower.
So one consequence is that melting glaciers help to compensate for low rainfall in times of drought, filling reservoirs to supply the nation’s energy supply.
Melting glaciers have created more than 1,000 new lakes across the mountains.
The inventory of Swiss Glacial lakes showed that almost 1,200 new lakes have formed in formerly glaciated regions of the Swiss Alps since the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850 and around 1,000 of them still exist today.
In the Alps, Zermatt, a famous car-free Swiss village in the shadow of the Matterhorn, recorded temperatures up to 33°C despite being 1,620 meters above sea level.
Mont Blanc was closed.

Pizol glacier-

The glacier, in the Glarus Alps of northeastern Switzerland, has shrunk to a tiny fraction of its original size.
Scientists say the glacier has lost at least 80% of its volume just since 2006, a trend accelerated by rising global temperatures.

50 years of data

Alpine Glacier Project which was established in 1972 and, along with the University of Salford, has led scientific expeditions to glaciers near Zermatt every summer for 50 years.
Over the project’s five decades, Gorner Glacier and Findel Glacier have retreated 1,385 metres and 1,655 metres respectively.

About Alps:

The Alps emerged during the Alpine orogeny (mountain-building event), an event that began about 65 million years ago as the Mesozoic Era was drawing to a close.
Alps are young fold mountains with rugged relief and high conical peaks.
They are the most prominent of western Europe’s physiographic regions. Some 750 miles long and more than 125 miles wide at their broadest point between Garmisch-Partenkirchen,Germany, and Verona, Italy, the Alps cover more than 80,000 square miles.
The Alps extend north from the subtropical Mediterranean coast near Nice, France, to Lake Geneva before trending east-northeast to Vienna, Austria.
There they touch the Danube River and meld with the adjacent plain.
Because of their arc like shape, the Alps separate the marine west-coast climates of Europe from the Mediterranean areas of France, Italy, and the Balkan region.

Countries Covered:

The Alps form part of France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Albania.
Only Switzerland and Austria can be considered true Alpine countries.

Important Peaks:

Mont Blanc is the highest peak in the Alps and in Europe, reaching a lofty 4,804 meters above sea level.
- It is located in the Graian Alps and lies within France, Switzerland, and Italy.
Monte Rosa is a massif (a compact group of mountains) consisting of several peaks.
- The highest peak in this range (Dufourspitze) has an elevation of 4,634 meters, claiming the title of Switzerland’s highest peak.
- Dom, which is located near Monte Rosa, Dom stands at 4,545 meters and is known as one of the “easier” tall peaks in the Alps to summit because of it’s straightforward routes.
Other major peaks are Liskamm, Weisshorn, Matterhorn, Dent Blanche, Grand Combin etc.