The roof of the Alps currently measures 4,805.59 meters according to the latest estimate revealed on Thursday October 5. During the previous evaluation, in 2021, Mont Blanc was measured at 4,807.81 meters, almost a meter less compared to 2017. It was in 2007 that the highest altitude was recorded. high (4,810.90 m).
Like every two years, a team of expert surveyors climbed the summit to measure it using high-precision tools. Armed with cutting-edge tools and equipped for the first time with a drone, around twenty people divided into eight teams made the ascent in mid-September in order to carry out point-by-point surveys for several days at the summit of the white giant. .
This is the 12th edition of this operation which aims to model the ice cap and collect scientific data on the impact of climate change on the Alpine mountains, specify the participants in this initiative, launched in 2001 by the departmental chamber expert surveyors from Haute-Savoie and which today brings together several partners.
The variations in size are not surprising, the surveyors warned upstream, because “since the dawn of time, the altitude of Mont Blanc has been continuously oscillating”. The “rocky” summit of the mountain rises to 4,792 meters, but it is the thickness of the layer of “eternal snow” that covers it, functioning like an enormous snowdrift, which “varies depending on the altitude winds and precipitation”, they detailed in 2021. The altitude of the summit also varies according to the seasons, Mont Blanc being a “dune complex” where the wind, more violent in winter, scrapes the snow more than in summer. The summit is therefore higher at the end of the summer than in spring, they pointed out.
“Don’t jump to conclusions.”
While the melting of glaciers is accelerating under the effect of global warming, which particularly affects the Alpine arc, one of the members of the team, Denis Borel, called for “remaining humble” and “not draw hasty conclusions on measurements which have only been carried out since 2001 with current precision. “We measure, we observe (…). We are there as sentinels of the environment,” he added. It is now up to “climatologists, glaciologists and other scientists to exploit all the data collected and put forward all the hypotheses to explain this phenomenon”.
European glaciers, particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures due to their relatively low altitude, lost around a third of their volume between 2000 and 2020, according to data compiled by scientists.
The melting experienced by glaciers in the French Alps during the summer of 2022 has been described as “exceptional”, representing around 5 to 7% of the remaining glacial mass according to glaciologists.