It is the second time, in the space of two months, that the record of freezing temperatures has been broken on the Alpine glaciers. The first time it had happened on July 25, in the midst of the heat wave that had hit much of Europe, when the altitude at which the temperature is zero degrees had risen to 5,184 metres; the new measurements now taken with the probe balloons from the Cameri station indicate that the freezing point has risen further to 5,328 metres. “The single event is not important in itself, but the succession of eventsabove all when records are repeated several times in a year“, says glaciologist Massimo Frezzotti, of the Roma Tre University to ANSA. succession of negative records“. In the past, it had only happened in July 1995 that the freezing point occurred above 5,000 metres.
In the mountains, the temperature decreases as one climbs in altitude and changes in altitude beyond which the temperature drops below zero degrees, called zero degree isothermthey have effects on the environment, changing the habitats of animals and plants. This is the reason why we pay close attention to the freezing point. There had been an alarm bell in thesummer 2022with the Marmolada disaster and the collapse of Saracchi on the Swiss side of the Grand Combin massif: a clear sign of how much the glaciers of the Alps they were now unstable because besieged by the heat.
Those events had also been the peak of a slow progression, measured starting since 1959 from Payerne station, according to data from the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, MeteoSwiss. In particular, it emerges that from 1961 to 1990 the average zero degree altitude was less than 3,400 metersbut from 1990 onwards it has progressively moved upwards, with a increase calculated in about 90 meters every 10 yearswith a’acceleration observed since the 1970s. To worry, it is noted on the Swiss site, is also the fact that the phenomenon continues also in winterwith the average altitude moving from 1991 to 2020 to 2,600 meters in the cold season.
In this summer of 2023, Frezzotti observes, “the succession of days and hot nights, which do not allow the snow to refreeze. Not to mention the fact that “we scientists are seeing that what has been predicted is accelerating. For example, after the snowfalls last spring, a stasis of the glaciers was expected during the summer”, which has not happened. “Unfortunately – he concludes – today’s negative records are the best of those we will probably see in the years”.
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Source: Ansa
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