Goodbye to the Adamello Glacier, the largest in Italy: it will disappear before 2080

Chronicle of a death foretold: «The Adamello glacier, the largest in Italy, 15 square kilometers in surface, will disappear by the end of the century due to global warming». To sentence it Roberto Ranzi, full professor of Hydraulic and Maritime Constructions and Hydrology at the University of Brescia, who presented the final results of the Climada project.

The scenery

According to the results of the research, due to the effect of global warming, probably by 2080, the Adamello glacier will vanish by the end of the century. Yesterday, in the auditorium of the Lucchini College in Brescia, the data from the research project, which started two years ago and was born on the basis of the ADA270 project, was presented. The snow accumulation measurements carried out since the mid-1960s in the Sarca-Chiese-Oglio hydrographic system show a decrease of between 5 and 6% every ten years compared to the value of 800 millimeters of water equivalent measured above 2,500 meters in April at the start of monitoring. And the mass balance calculated over the last fifteen years marks an average loss of almost -2.2 meters per year of equivalent thickness in water, compared to -1.4 meters per year 15 years previously.

The reduction of the area

The glacier’s area reduction is the inexorable consequence of rising temperatures. The surface of Adamello measured 15.7 square kilometers in August 2007 while it shrank to 13.1 in 2022, with an average of -11% every 10 years. The mass balance measurements carried out in 2022 by glaciologists from Lombardy and Trentino attest to an average loss of thickness more than double compared to the average between 1995 and 2009. If we assume that global warming is that predicted by the most optimistic scenarios, corresponding to a warming contained below 2°C compared to the current climate, the disappearance of the glacier would therefore occur before 2080. A further acceleration could derive from the blackening of the ice caused by the deposition of dust transported by the wind and from the development of organic substances which increase the predisposition to absorb solar radiation and melt.

The alarm

“The results are not comforting and are much more of a wake-up call,” he says Giorgio Maione, Councilor for the Environment of the Lombardy Region. “Searching for scientific data in the field is the best way to make correct policy, when it comes to the environment we must not fall into impromptu assessments.” Within thirty years, a significant annual decrease in frost days (-23) as well as snow cover days (-20) is expected. Which will lead to strong alterations in the rainfall regime as well as an increase in natural risks. «The impact of climate change exists and it is serious», concludes Ballarin Denti, «we must act in terms of mitigation and adaptation, facilitating natural and anthropic resilience factors».

I study

Today’s conclusions were reached through study techniques. The glacier was drilled, extracting a 224 meter “core” which, once analyzed in Bicocca, told 2 thousand years of climatic and environmental history of the Central Alps. Traces of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident remain in the ice: that layer of snow is now melting. And there are 22 meters left until the ice that preserves the traces of Tritium found in 1963 following the nuclear experiments of the USA, USSR, France and the United Kingdom melts. The measurement with fiber optic sensors inserted into the glacier up to 170 meters deep carried out by the start-up Cohaerentia is very important.