Marmolada, researchers from the University of Genoa in the team that raised the alarm as early as 2019
Researchers from the University of Genoa in the team that raised the alarm in 2019 on the Marmolada glacierwhere over the weekend a large block of ice broke away, overwhelming more ropes of hikers, causing at least six deaths, several injured and missing.
In just 10 years, the glacier of the iconic Dolomites “has reduced its volume by 30%, while the areal mountain has been 22%”. if the rate of reduction “continues at the same pace as in the decade analyzed, within the next 25-30 years the glacier will have almost disappeared”, giving way “only to small plates of ice and snow, fed by avalanches and protected by shadow of the highest rocky walls, no longer equipped with crevasses and movement “.
The study was organized by Cnr, conducted by a team of researchers from the Institute of Marine Sciences of the National Research Council (Cnr-Ismar), the Universities of Genoa and Trieste, the Welsh University of Aberystwyth and the ARPA Veneto.
The scholars compared two geophysical surveys on the glacier carried out in 2004 and 2015 in a text entitled “Recent evolution of Marmolada glacier (Dolomites, Italy) by mean of ground and airborne Gpr surveys” published in “Remote Sensing of the Environment” .
“Ice, therefore, will no longer exist – warned Renato Colucci of the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council, Cnr-Isp in 2019 – and if, as per climate scenarios, the temperature should increase at a faster rate in the coming decades , this could even be underestimated and the disappearance of the glacier could happen even more rapidly “. And “in any case – we read – even if the temperature remains as it is, the glacier is already in total disequilibrium with the current climate and therefore its destiny appears to be sealed anyway”.