1 December 2015
To the left is the Caldero Glacier in 1958.
Twenty percent of Europe's Alpine glaciers (click here) melted between 1980 and 2000. With the speed of melting picking up, the glaciers could be gone by 2050, according to the fifth annual report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
A case in point would be Europe's most southerly glacier, the Calderone, which sits on the Gran Sasso massif in Abruzzo. Climate change has already sealed its fate and experts now say it will be gone by 2020.
As Italy's Alpine glaciers recede, the melted water contributes to rising sea levels. The loss of glaciers also increases global temperatures as the large tracts of white ice are no longer present to reflect the sun's rays back out to space.
It's not just glaciers that are melting either. Fragile Alpine environments are particularly susceptible to climate change and are warming at three times the rate of coastal areas, something which threatens Italy's ski industry.
Figures from Italy's Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea show that the predicted end of the century changes of 4C in the Alps would eliminate nearly all snow cover under 2000 meters, while snow at higher altitudes would arrive later and melt sooner.
That would be bad news for Italy's 286 ski resorts, whose half-pipes, ski lifts and chalets may soon be nothing more than abandoned features in mountain meadows....
16th july 2005. (click here) Calderone glacier seen from Corno Grande Eastern Summit. Calderone Glacier (elevation: 2650 m - 2850 m) is an almost extint glacier: the ice still stands under a layer of gravels, and it appears only in few spots. It's covered in snow for the most part of the year, but in the warmer years or after a dry winter it could be almost completely uncovered before the first snowfalls of the season...
