The Adamello, the largest glacier in the Italian Alps, is slowly dying from global warming: at the bedside of the pearly mantle, its guardians give it less than a century of life.
On this clear day at the end of August, a strange “caravan” of scientists and environmental activists travels on the rocky slopes of the Adamello-Presanella massif whose peak is Mount Adamello which culminates at 3,554 meters.
Its cirques and crests were the scene of fierce battles between Italian and Austro-Hungarian hunters during the First World War, and are still disgorged today with cast iron bodies, rifles and shell barrels.
If time has muffled the echo of arms, it now threatens to wipe out the tongue of ice that meanders down towards the Genova valley.
“The glacier has lost almost 2.7 km since the end of the 19th century”, summarizes Cristian Ferrari, president of the Glacial Commission of the Alpine Society of Trentino (SAT), mounted on the Adamello with a journalist from AFPTV .
“Over the past five years, the front of the glacier has lost an average of 15 meters per year. But for the year 2022 alone, it has retreated by 139 meters” due to particularly unfavorable atmospheric conditions.
Like other alpine glaciers, the Adamello suffers from the lack of snow (-50% last year). The snow cover is thinner and the temperatures of the summer – which is getting longer and longer – give it less time to freeze.
The glacier is also fragmenting and therefore presents multiple flanks to the attacks of global warming.
“We read the traces of the past, we read the traces of the present and we see that the trend is not good because the blocks that we see falling today will transform this part of the glacier into a glacier covered with debris, and the slope will be destabilized”, analyzes Marco Giardino of the Italian Glaciological Committee, professor at the University of Turin, who made the ascent.
For four years, the association for the defense of the environment Legambiente has been launching these “caravans” of activists on the glaciers of the Italian Alps to make the authorities and the population aware of the consequences of global warming.
During these four years, explains Vanda Bonario, responsible for the association for the Alps, “we have seen a large number of glaciers. But last year we wanted to return to the glaciers that we had already observed two years earlier. early, and the change was incredible. Because of the drought and the heat, 2022 was an annus horribilis.”
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), temperatures in this region of the Alps will increase by between one and three degrees Celsius in 2050 and between three and six degrees by the end of the century.
At this rate, the Adamello could disappear before the end of the century.
04/09/2023 11:31:58 – On the Italian glacier Adamello (Italy) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
