Alps rapidly losing their glaciers due to climate change: Scientist

ANKARA

A seasoned French glaciologist warned that the Alps’ glaciers have lost more than half their volume since the late 19th century, highlighting the accelerating impact of climate change on Europe's highest mountain range.

In an interview as part of Anadolu's special reports "Europe's Peak: The Alps," Sylvain Coutterand detailed the profound changes affecting France's Alpine region, including shifts in vegetation and human activities.

Coutterand pointed to a stark transformation in the Alpine landscape.

Recalling his childhood summer visits in the 1970s and ‘80s to Les Houches – a village in the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region near Chamonix – he said precipitation was frequent, coming every other day, sustaining snow at high altitudes and allowing glaciers to advance.

Today, rising temperatures are far more pronounced in ski resorts like France's Chamonix and Switzerland's Zermatt. "Climate change is felt more intensely in the mountains than elsewhere," Coutterand said.

Temperature records in the Alps date back to the 1880s. "Since the end of the 19th century, the glaciers have lost more than 50% of their volume," he noted.

Alpine glaciers began retreating from their Little Ice Age maximum extents around the mid-19th century, with brief periods of stagnation or re-advances in many regions during the 1890s, 1920s, and 1970s-1980s, according to glaciological reconstructions. Lower-elevation and smaller glaciers have since disappeared entirely.

‘Disappearance of glaciers is happening now’

"The disappearance of glaciers is happening now," Coutterand said. "According to models, iconic glaciers like the Mer de Glace could vanish between 2060 and 2080. We are fully in the era of climate change, with no end in sight."

Looking ahead, he predicted severe challenges for hydropower production and cooling nuclear plants due to reduced water flow.

In the Chamonix Valley alone, future water supply issues loom large once glaciers are gone.

"Within 100 years, few glaciers will remain in the Alps, limited to the highest peaks like Mont Blanc or Monte Rosa," Coutterand warned.

Coutterand explained that glacial melt is altering the region's vegetation, enabling parasites to infest trees and destroy forests, adding that large spruce trees in the field are dying and drying out.

According to the glaciologist, bark beetles settling on these trees first devour the bark, then the trunk itself.

He stressed that curbing greenhouse gas emissions could still save the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland.