By Cecile Mantovani and Denis Balibouse
JUNGFRAUJOCH, Switzerland (Reuters) – The biggest glacier in the Alps could yet be partially saved if global warming is capped below two degrees Celsius, Swiss scientists said on Friday, although significant ice loss is now inevitable.
Glaciers around the globe are disappearing faster than ever, with the last three-year period seeing the largest glacial mass loss on record, according to a UN report on Friday.
The Great Aletsch Glacier in the Bernese Alps, which is 20 kilometers long and weighs 10 billion tons, attracts over a million people a year who can view its immensity from the Junfraujoch viewing platform at 3,454 meters above sea level.
“It’s very likely that almost all glaciers are going to be lost and I sincerely hope that the Aletsch Glacier at this high elevation, we may be able to preserve some of the ice,” Matthias Huss, Director of Glacier Monitoring Switzerland (GLAMOS), told Reuters at the top of the Jungfraujoch railway station.
In a scenario without any climate mitigation, its three distinct tributaries that merge into a vast river of ice would vanish, leaving behind a deep, grey valley, a depiction from the Swiss Academy of Sciences showed.
But if global warming holds below two degrees, it would survive, albeit much shorter and thinner and “considerably reduce the menacing rise in the sea level”, the document said.
“In particular, glaciers at over 3,000 metres above sea level could be preserved in the long term,” said the Swiss Academy of Sciences of the second scenario.
The research, released to coincide with the first World Day for Glaciers, did not say which was the more likely scenario, but Swiss glaciologist Andreas Linsbauer said it was “probably something in between”.
More than half of the glaciers in the Alps are in Switzerland where temperatures are rising by around twice the global average due to climate change. Already, their volume has fallen by almost 40 percent since 2000.
(Writing by Emma Farge, Editing by Nick Zieminski)
