Cracks and crevasses

Glacier shrinkage also a direct danger to humans

Researchers sounded the alarm in April: an enormous loss of length was detected on Austria's largest glacier, the Pasterze.

(Bild: OeAV Gletschermessdienst)

Even if this winter was cold and the spring was wet, Andreas Kellerer-Pirklbauer, head of the scientific glacier measuring service of the Alpine Association, assumes that the glaciers in Austria will continue to lose mass and length this year. Their retreat also poses a direct danger to people walking on them.

Every year, the so-called area managers have been compiling a glacier report for the 90 or so glaciers in Austria - for 133 years now. At the weekend, these volunteer glacier surveyors from the Alpine Association met for a symposium. The program included an excursion to the Hallstatt and Schladming glaciers and a presentation of measuring methods.

Glaciers exist only from ice reserves from the past
In the meantime, an average glacier retreat of more than 20 meters per year "is unfortunately nothing out of the ordinary", said Kellerer-Priklbauer. There is no longer a glacier in Austria "that has a nutrient area that can even come close to maintaining the existing ice mass. The Austrian glaciers only exist because of the ice reserves accumulated in the past."

Domestic glaciers to disappear by 2070
Kellerer-Pirklbauer explained that cold and precipitation at the beginning of the year cannot change this if a summer with "critical heat periods" is followed by a warm, dry autumn like last year. He illustrates the situation with the melting of an ice cube. If you take it out of the freezer, it only thaws after a while. This is also the case with glaciers; a short period of colder and wetter weather cannot stop the delayed process. He expects the Austrian glaciers to have melted completely by 2070 at the latest.

Cracks and crevasses after retreat become a danger
The glacier retreat is also dangerous for humans, he pointed out. The surface is cracking, crevasses are getting bigger and tongues are breaking away. Kellerer-Pirklbauer, who is also the area manager for glaciers around the Pasterze in Carinthia, said that this makes walking on them risky. For example, Austria's largest glacier can only be surveyed because "we can use the mountain rescue rope bridge". The glacier stream has now swollen into a "raging river", making it impossible to cross.