On the other side of the border in Austria, Andrea Fischer, vicirector of the Institute of the Academy of Sciences of Austria for the research of interdisciplinary mountains, said that this type of massive alpine movements are becoming stronger and more frequent.
“A third of Austria’s glaciers will disappear in the next five years,” said Fischer, standing on what remains of the Stubai glacier, about 72 miles northeast of Morteratsch. At the top of one of the most popular ski stations in Austria, it is projected that Stubai will disappear completely by 2033.
“The end of the alpine glaciers is really coming very, very close. And we see it. He is not modeling on the computer. It is a real fact,” Fischer added while sailing on a muddy track to the edge of the ice.
Global temperatures continue to rise as international efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions hesitate. Last year he was the most popular registered, according to NASA. The United States withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement significantly undermined global climatic efforts, which makes the objective already difficult to limit heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius (approximately 3 degrees Fahrenheit) is almost impossible.
Europe is the fastest continent on the earth and the temperature of Austria has increased 3.1 degrees Celsius since 1900, more than double the global average. Studying glaciers, said Fischer, is essential to understand where the weather is directed.
“Glaciers are climatic files,” he said. The glaciers retain records of precipitation and atmospheric circulation that extend for centuries, data that do not exist anywhere else. “I’m really looking for every piece of cold ice that contains this file information,” he said, before everything is gone.
