Austria’s glaciers are disappearing at an unprecedented rate

“We are in a new climatic regime,” says glaciologist Andrea Fischer at the press conference at the Tyrolean Jamtal Glacier. The fact that the entire high-Alpine landscape around the meanwhile rather miserable remainder of the once massive body of ice is in motion is really noticeable on site. According to Fischer, the rapid retreat of glaciers, which is surprising even for scientists, should also lead to a rethinking of warning systems, disaster funds and construction measures.

If one penetrates these days to the still icy end of the Jamtal in the Silvretta group, it becomes clear that one is in an area in which many things are being reorganized. In mid-August, for example, massive amounts of precipitation were recorded in the region on a small scale, which are comparable to those of 2005, when masses of water flowing down the Inn from the mountains even threatened Innsbruck’s old town. The current water masses caused a large-scale slipping of part of the side moraine of the moraine that still reached around the year 1850 to just before the Jamtalhütte at 2,165 meters above sea level glacier.

Influence far into the valleys

The streams that flow down the mountain flanks in the high valley are clearly colored these days. “This is not the usual color,” explained the researcher from the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) in Innsbruck. A lot of sediment is washed from the mountain here. Further down in the valley, excavators are working to clear the river bed as much as possible after the mass movements of the past few days. According to the glaciologist, what happens up there can ultimately affect the entire power plant chain and thus have an effect far into the valleys.

Once you have crossed the streams, which the expert has obviously recently shifted their bed several times, you reach the glacier gate, i.e. the lowest edge of the ice body. From the marking of the ice edge at the end of summer 2022 it is a few meters to the rugged line where the Jamtalferner is now. The Alpine Club’s glacier report from 2021 to 2022 shows a length loss of 37.5 meters here – the second highest value in the Silvretta group after the Ochsentaler glacier (43 yards lost).

Less four inches of ice per day

The meltwater drips incessantly on the edges of the Jamtalferner. It can be clearly seen that the ice body is also being hollowed out from below. The glacial stream is almost roaring – that’s how massive the outflow is at almost 15 degrees Celsius during the day.

Fischer comes up here about every 14 days: “It looks different every time.” The researcher and her team accompany numerous glacier in the Eastern Alps. Sometimes it is difficult to recognize them by their shape, the changes are so rapid. At the Jamtalgletscher – a reference glacier in the “World Glacier Monitoring Service” (worldglaciermonitoring service, in short: WGMS) – recently things went particularly quickly. “We lose around ten centimeters of ice here every day,” revealed a recent measurement.

“Not to be saved in the short term”

From the mark where the body of ice ended in 1980, it is now hundreds of meters as the crow flies to the current source of the glacial stream. It will move up a lot further, until in about ten years there will be more or less nothing left of the once proud glacier The glaciologist estimates that the glaciologist will be left: “In the short term it can no longer be saved. That’s how it is glacier already a piece of the past. He is a shadow of himself and is on his last legs.” Only a very large volcanic eruption, which cools the earth down a lot, could still slow down this development.

It has only become clear in recent years that things can actually happen so quickly. The end of glacier, these structures that are so iconic for the Alps, the scientists had to bring forward “several decades” compared to earlier forecasts. They will be history in the Eastern Alps by 2050 at the latest.

“2023 extremely warm year again”

Austria lost an estimated six percent of its area glacier in 2022 alone. The summer with more precipitation in many regions this year, with late snowfall, hardly improves the situation. Because despite the perceived bad weather, they are melting glacier very strong.

Created with Visme Infographic Maker

Fischer speaks of a “drop in the ocean”. Although 2023 was a little less hot in this country than the previous record years, it is still an “extremely warm year”. This year’s melting, which was somewhat reduced compared to the previous year, nevertheless “fits seamlessly into the extreme years”.

In the uppermost areas of glacier There is no snow at all this year at over 3,000 meters above sea level at the Jamspitzen and the Dreiländerspitz, which lies between Tyrol, Vorarlberg and Switzerland. “The firn – snow that has been lying there for several years and is usually compacted into ice within about three decades – has completely melted. The glacier has thinned out,” says Fischer.

Hardly any summer snowfall

In the past, two-thirds of its surface area was still covered with snow at the end of summer, and in autumn there was usually up to three meters of winter snow left. Today there is only between three and four meters of snow in winter, which completely melts away in summer. Summer snowfalls, which used to bring the melt to a standstill for several weeks, are now almost non-existent.

Ultimately, under these climatic conditions, the Ferner has no chance of regenerating. On the contrary, it is noticeably crumbling, disintegrating into separate ice fields that are already very dirty further down. As a result, things happen quickly, explained Fischer.

Dirty ice

There are no reports of such dirty ice in the glaciological literature of the 1970s and 1980s. White and bluish shimmering ice still dominated there, as well as snow and firn higher up for large parts of the summer.

The colored ice surface thaws faster because the dark rocks heat up much more in the sunshine. At the same time, the melt water flowing away gnaws at the ice from below, the breaking of which can be heard again and again at the edges. These rapid changes can be seen as a kind of new era. Fischer: “The large-scale disintegration of the glacier is a new phenomenon that we have only been observing for three to four years.” Historically, there are no scientifically processed precedents for such a “transitional phase”.

New models needed

Completely new models must now be developed for the transition to the Eastern Alps, which will be ice-free except for tiny remnants in the next few decades – also in order to better understand the subsequent developments in the higher glaciers in the Western Alps or on other mountain ranges in the world, to which similar ones will follow with a time lag processes.

For Fischer and her colleagues, the task of science is to analyze this data-based and systematically, to derive forecasts and to objectively present the rapid decline in the population. Many people lack awareness, many have difficulty with the thought that a gradual development can cross a tipping point and from there proceed much faster. Research is currently being done on measuring such feedback mechanisms.

Are landslides becoming more frequent?

The researcher is convinced that this tipping will also be felt further down in the valleys. The sediment and water masses have to come down from the mountain. The question is at what speed this is happening and how it can be managed. What can trigger a thawing of permafrost ground became clear at the beginning of June not far from the Jamtalferner, when more than 100,000 cubic meters of material thundered over the wide water in the direction of the Jamtalhütte in the area of ​​the north-west flank of the southern Flüchthorn.

If there is heavy precipitation in the high mountains, which no longer falls in the form of snow even at the top, the water runs unchecked over the remaining glacial ice. Together with the large amount of meltwater, large masses of water and rock can be set in motion here, threatening places and causing damage in the valleys.

Natural space has to be rearranged

Until the glacier and much of the permafrost has thawed, the entire natural environment will have to reorganize itself in the coming years. “This requires a better understanding of the process, which we must acquire immediately, because these transitional phenomena only last a few years. We will have a new state with emerging vegetation. The first tufts of grass are even growing here on the ice in the rubble,” says Fischer.

Before an alpine landscape is established, “we will always be faced with surprises”. For example, it is unclear how ice remnants can affect landslides. Scientists are trying to research and document all of this. In many cases, however, the necessary human resources are also lacking.

Ultimately, all of this is needed to establish an early warning system that is tailored to the new conditions, the glaciologist emphasized. One has to think about whether to invest in cost-intensive constructions or, above all, to improve the warning systems and increase the disaster fund in order to use the funds to compensate those who have been injured in the “transition to a warmer world”.

Here, political decisions are needed in consultation with the experts, explained Fischer. In any case, there could only be a comeback for the Alpine glaciers, perhaps towards the end of the century, if real climate protection measures were implemented now.