Italy’s Ventina glacier has now melted so many geologists

Rome (AP) – Italy’s Ventina glacier, one of the largest in northern Lombardy, has melted so much due to climate change that geologists can no longer measure it as they have in the past 130 years.

After this year’s hot summer, geologists found that the simple missions that are used as a benchmark to measure the retraction of the glacier are now buried under rock sliles and ruins that have made the terrain too unsafe for future personal visits.

The Lombard Glaciological Service said on Monday that it would now use drone images and distant exploration to pursue the continued shrinkage on the glacier near Sondrio in the same general area of northeast lombardy, in which some events in Winter Olympics organize some 2026 Olympics.

Geologists say that the Ventina glacier has already lost 1.7 kilometers (1 mile) since the first measuring benchmarks in front of the glacier were positioned in 1895.

The melting has accelerated in recent years, whereby the glacier has lost 431 meters (471 yards) in the past 10 years, almost half of them since 2021, the service says. It is another example of how the acceleration of global warming melts and shrinks the glaciers in Europe, which leads to a variety of environmental and other effects.

“While we could still hope until the 1980s that there would be normal cycles (withdrawal) or at least a recessed withdrawal, something really striking has taken place in the past 40 years,” said Andrea Toffaletti, member of the Lombardy Glaciological Service.

Italy’s mountain glaciers, which are located in the Alps and Dolomites in the north and along the central Apennines, have decreased in winter for years thanks to the insufficient snowfall. Glacier always melt some in summer, with the drainage of mountain streams and rivers.

But the hot summer are “no longer able to guarantee the survival of the winter snow pack that keeps the glacier intact, said Toffaletti.

“In order to regenerate and keep in balance, a certain amount of residual snow from winter must remain on the surface of the glacier at the end of summer. And this happens less and less frequently,” said Toffaletti.

According to the Lombardy service, the Alps represent a climate hotspot, which records the double global average of the temperature increases since pre-industrial times, which leads to the loss of over 64% of the volume of the alpine glaciers.

In February, the magazine Nature reported in a study in which the glaciers of the world had lost ice from 2000 to 2011 each year with around 255 billion tons (231 billion tons), which, however, accelerated to around 346 billion tons (314 billion tons) in the next decade.