Alpine glaciers could lose 30 to 50 percent of their volume
Published: Friday, Jan 19th 2024, 14:10
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Even if global warming is stopped completely, the volume of ice in the European Alps will decrease by 34 percent by 2050, according to a study by the University of Lausanne. If it continues at the same rate, half of the ice will be lost.
This was shown by scientists from the Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Lausanne (Unil) in an international study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
According to the study, at least 34 percent of the ice volume in the European Alps will have disappeared by 2050. This was calculated on the basis of a new computer model developed by the authors in collaboration with the University of Grenoble (F), ETH and the University of Zurich. The scientists used deep learning methods to train their model.
In their optimistic scenario, warming was halted in 2022, but glaciers still suffer losses due to inertial phenomena. However, the reality is different, as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise worldwide, as Unil writes in a press release on Friday.
The second, more realistic forecast therefore paints a much gloomier picture. It assumes that 46 percent or almost half of the ice volume in the Alps will have disappeared by 2050 if the trend of the last 20 years continues. The development is even more dramatic if only the data from the last ten years is extrapolated. In this case, the loss of ice mass would even amount to 65 percent.
Situation could be even more dramatic
The data used to create the scenarios ends in 2022, a year that was followed by an exceptionally hot summer. It is therefore likely that the situation will be even worse than that depicted, Samuel Cook, researcher at Unil and lead author of the study, is quoted in the press release.
According to various studies published in recent years, in particular by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), European glaciers could lose between 80 and 90 percent of their volume by 2100. A modeling study by ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), published in 2019, also estimated a loss of 50 percent by 2050.
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