The Austrian Alps are on the brink. Glaciers could vanish soon

The Austrian Alpine Club (OeAV), boasting over half a million members, is crucial in managing more than 234 Alpine shelters across Austria and neighbouring regions. Its responsibilities include maintaining over 16,156 hiking trails and producing detailed maps of Austria's key mountain areas.

A documentary showcased on Euronews Green highlights the retreat of an Austrian glacier since 2020. The OeAV reports a noteworthy shrinkage of Austria's largest glacier, the Pasterze, located in the Glockner mountain group in Carinthia, by 669 feet—a truly unprecedented occurrence. Traditionally, glaciers shrink in summer and expand in winter. Still, due to the warming climate, Alpine glaciers fail to regain their summer losses, leading to a continual reduction in their surface area.

Issues have also arisen for European winter sports enthusiasts, who faced subpar conditions this past winter, with the season-ending sooner than expected. This was particularly true in lower-altitude resorts, hinting at a dwindling future for winter sports on the Alps' glaciers.

Only one of the 93 glaciers monitored during 2022-2023 showed no significant shrinkage. The OeAV's annual report highlighted that 79 glaciers, measured over the past two years, have receded by an average of 78.5 feet—marking the third-highest shrinkage rate in the club's 133 years of records, with the highest rates occurring in the last seven years.

Andreas Kellerer-Pirklbauer, head of the glacier measurement service, shared at a Salzburg press conference that in 40 to 45 years, Austria could be nearly ice-free, with possible remnants surviving in shaded areas like the north-eastern Glockner glacier or parts of the Oetztal valley. Gerhard Lieb, co-chair of the glacier measurement service, emphasized that "Time has run out" for the Austrian glaciers.

According to Lieb, rebuilding the glaciers now would, at best, preserve their current size. However, he asserts that the chances of saving the Austrian glaciers are slim as the natural rebuilding process is exceedingly slow, making their disappearance in the coming decades inevitable. Establishing reserves at the glaciers' upper edges to help them stabilize would take decades.

Glaciers, massive ice bodies formed from centuries of compressed snow and ice, are among the clearest indicators of human-induced climate change. Globally, glaciers are in rapid retreat. Swiss experts reported that Switzerland witnessed a 4% loss in total glacier volume in 2023, marking the second-largest annual reduction after a 6% decrease in 2022.