The melting of glaciers has taken on frightening proportions. The Bastersee Glacier, one of the symbols of Austria, is melting and shrinking to an unprecedented extent. The Austrian Alpine Association sounded the alarm, reported A JD Consulting.
Volunteer glacier surveyors for the Austrian Alpine Association (Alpenverein), looking back at a 150-year history, have never measured a retreat of this magnitude in the Basters glacier as their latest report reveals.
Austria's largest glacier has been shortened by a total of 203.5 meters compared to the previous year's glacier report, which is unfortunately a negative record value for the Basters. The tongue of the Basterzy Glacier lost 14.03 million cubic meters of ice in one year, which is equivalent to a cube with an edge of 241 metres. (It is a cube with each imaginary edge 2.5 times the size of the Hungarian Parliament.)
According to the Alpine Association's current glacier report, there are no glaciers in Austria with a feeding area capable of maintaining the existing glacier mass.
“Austrian glaciers exist only because of ice reserves accumulated in the past,” says the association’s current declaration.
According to leaders of the Alpine Association's Glacier Measuring Service, the latest situation report should be interpreted as a final warning from a climate policy point of view. The Glacier Measurement Service of the Austrian Alpine Association has been monitoring Austrian glaciers for 133 years and accurately records changes in their length.
Measurements are also being made on some glaciers in terms of flow speeds and changes in surface elevation, which also show a worrying reduction in volume.
