Scientists predict the total melting of Italy's Adamello glacier in the next 50 years
Since 2016 the Adamello glacier, the largest in Italy, has retreated ~200m due to global warming.
According to the Intergovernamental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this region of the Alps will see temperatures rising by between 3 and 6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. This heat and longer lasting summers, combined with the lack of snow cover on the glacier are not giving it enough time to freeze and making it progressively fade away year after year. The glacier is melting at the average speed of approximately 15m a year and has lost 2.7km in length between the end of 19th century and today. 2022 was a dry and catastrophic year for the Adamello glacier, during which it lost 139m in length in only one year.
On 5 September, one of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites allowed us to see the trace that the glacier has left in its retreat. Copernicus Sentinel-2 high-resolution data allows mapping of glaciers around the world by monitoring their boundaries over time.
