The year that is about to end is particularly difficult for our mountains: demonstrating that the late snowfalls of last spring were a mere illusion, the glaciers are increasingly thinner and almost all of them are retreating sharply throughout the Alpine range and with impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity.
Of all of them, Adamello, the largest glacier in the Italian Alps, is the most suffering: in 2024 alone it recorded a loss of thickness in the frontal sector of 3 meters and effects of melting up to 3100 meters above sea level. The photo taken in September is emblematic: with the forehead of his tongue completely exposed, despite the 6 meters of snow measured in late spring on the Pian di Neve del Ghiaccio.
We talked about it here: Let’s say goodbye to Adamello: the king of glaciers destined to disappear within 60 years
But negative signals also for the Careser glacier (Ortles-Cevedale Group) with an average loss of 190 centimeters of thickness, and in Alto Adige the glaciers of the Vedretta Lunga (Val Martello) and the Vedretta di Ries (Valle Aurina) with a loss of thickness on the tongues between one and a half and two meters, just to name a few. A single positive note comes from Montasio glacier in Friuli-Venezia Giulia which recorded a + 200 millimeters of water equivalent (it will probably be the only “plus sign” of the Alpine Arc for 2024).
The report
These are the data that emerge, on the occasion of International Mountain Day, from fifth report of the Glacier Caravan of Legambiente“Gthe effects of the climate crisis on glaciers, the Alpine environment and biodiversity”, created in collaboration with the Glaciological Committee and CIPRA ITALIA, in which a package of 12 proposals for a European road map that puts mountains, glaciers and biodiversity at the center and to be implemented as soon as possible, starting from 2025, the International Year of Glaciers.
In this match it is important that Italy plays its part. Glaciers – recalls Legambiente – are among the environments protected by the Habitats Directive, which identifies them as “Permanent Glaciers”. Of the 123 sites of community importance that have glaciers within them, 50% are located in Italy.
Climate crisis: goodbye glaciers and biodiversity
Weighing on the health of the Alpine glaciers there is undoubtedly a climate crisis which in 2024 accelerated the pace, with record heat and freezing temperatures at altitude then able to cancel out the benefits of the late snowfalls this spring; but also with 146 extreme weather events, recorded from January to December 2024 in the Alpine arc, which made the mountain more fragile. Lombardy (49), Veneto (41) and Piedmont (22) are the most affected regions. In some cases some weather events have also accelerated the melting as in the case of the Saharan dust that arrived with some of the spring disturbances at high altitude.
The impacts of melting glaciers are also increasingly having repercussions on flora and fauna. Among the species most at risk are the chamoisbut also hare whitetheermine and the white partridge. The mismatch between the snow season and the moult exposes these animals to greater visibility, making it more difficult to search for food and escape from predators.
Among the plants that live near glaciers, the one most in danger is theArtemisia genipi (flower that grows only in the proglacial environments of the Western Alps); but there are also there Saxifraga bryoides, Saxifraga oppositifolia, Cardamine resedifoliathe glacier buttercup: all specialized plants that would be seriously at risk if they lost their habitat. At the same time, the void left by the glaciers is populated by new ecosystems and the forest advances.
As for climate impacts, here are the symbolic cases of 2024: three symbolic cases for 2024 of the impacts that the climate crisis is causing at altitude indicated in the report: they range from the Tschierva glacier, located below Piz Bernina, the highest peak in the eastern Alps , in Switzerland, where on 16 April 2024 a high mountain landslide occurred with 8-9 million cubic meters of rock and ice that broke away from the mountain and slid down valley; to the rock glacier of Livigno, where the degradation of the internal ice caused a series of debris flows last summer. In the Western Alps the storm of 29-30 June caused profound morphological transformations in Valle d’Aosta and Alta Val Sesia.
