The Glaciers are melting - so what?

by Irene Auerbach

Edition 2.2022 of Bergauf, our parent club’s magazine, focuses yet again on the fact that glaciers are receding. This article is an attempt to summarise five texts: the introduction by the Vice President Ingrid Hayek (p7); the very detailed annual Glacier Report (p11-19) by Gerhard Karl Lieb and Andreas KellererPirklbauer as well as a more philosophical text by the same authors (p23); the vivid description by Veronika Raich of the practicalities involved in actually measuring glaciers (p24-27); and Franz Jäger’s historical account (p28/29). Anybody wanting really detailed information concerning their favourite Austrian mountain group or even their pet glacier should get a copy of Bergauf to consult p18-21 (Bergauf 2022 - online Blätterversion Alpenverein) or consult the authors at Graz University.

In 1963 Ingrid Hayek, then a child, wrote in her diary: “Yesterday Daddy and I … drove to the Timmelsjoch. That is 2509m high. The view onto the glaciers was beautiful! Daddy told me that the white stuff was snow and the grey stuff ice. He also told me the ice would never melt.” Alas, though her Daddy was the cleverest man in the world, here he was wrong. Since those days the amount of petrol an ordinary car uses has halved, but the number of cars in the world has increased tenfold, and the average temperature in the world has risen by 1ºC. Austria’s glaciers have shrunk by half. Is that good? Is that bad? Or does it simply not matter?

Even if, at last, world-wide climate conferences manage to set cast-iron goals to stop further warming of our planet, glaciers react with delay and will continue to recede even if temperatures are stabilised. Nevertheless, each of us can make a small contribution towards bringing forward the day when glaciers no longer shrink; according to the IPCC every kilogramme of CO2 that is sent into the atmosphere today will in the long run melt 15Kg of glacier.

Every late summer, 23 skilled and experienced volunteers (alas, as far as named, all male) from the ÖAV (not counting helpers) set off to measure 91 glaciers in Austria. The glacier ‘budget year’ is reckoned to start with the first snows of autumn and end just before that event in the following year, when the maximum snow cover of the glaciers - and snow cover is their most effective protection - has melted away. The 2021 measurements were taken between 22 August and 26 September. Bergauf finds it worth mentioning that there were no accidents, something not to be taken for granted as, with the shrinkage of the glaciers, those monitors have to walk and climb ever further and higher and often more awkwardly to reach the markers set the previous year. Measurements are then taken from the markers by all manner of methods, but not excluding basic tools like measuring tapes. There are 233 markers - and this year 52 of these had to be repositioned or newly installed because conditions had changed so much. They often consist of paint sprayed on prominent stones, any unusually shaped ones being particularly useful; special cairns may be built, or grid references used.

Sometimes last year’s marker can’t be found because avalanches or rubble have covered them up. The glacier monitors can only measure lengths - and that is tricky enough, what with increasing amounts of rubble falling onto the glacier tongues from moraines towering increasingly high above the actual bed of the glacier. Some scraping may be needed to find the actual ice - and thus a truly truthful measurement. Loss of glacier thickness and therefore of mass can only be estimated. Local knowledge is indispensable, supported by photos from previous years and a good sense of orientation. Some of these volunteer monitors have been fulfilling this task for decades - Bergauf describes a day in the work of Günther Groß who’s done it for over 50 years - and the task is often passed on within families from one generation to another. Next time you are walking in Austria and wonder at paint blobs or strange letters and arrows that clearly aren’t waymarkers - now you know what they are.

The measurements taken last autumn again give great cause for concern; of those 91 glaciers, 84 (92.3%) had receded further compared to the previous year and just 7 (7.7%) had remained stationary, i.e. changed their lengths no more than 1m either way. The Pasterze - the spectacular glacier flowing south from the Großglockner - lost 42.7m in just this one year. The average loss of length was 11m, thus clearly less than in 2020 when it was 15m, but the observers and the university scientists who process the data do not interpret this as a major change of trend. They attribute it to the fact that a slightly cooler-than-average temperature in August enabled some of the results of unusually heavy snowfalls in May to survive through the summer, thus supplying some of the essential protective cover, the importance of which has already been mentioned. Notwithstanding this marginal improvement in 2021, if we continue to have summer temperatures only vaguely matching the average of the last 30 years, glaciers will continue to shrink. Glaciers are simply too big to exist in today’s climate and will continue to recede.

Bergauf prints a drawing from 1900; a special religious service held above the Mittelbergferner with the tearful participants, led by a priest in full regalia, praying that the glacier will stop growing, a growth that could endanger pastures and even villages further down the valley. Ice dams would develop, trapping meltwater into temporary lakes, eventually breaking and causing huge amounts of water to rush downstream. The name of one of the few German glaciers, “übergossene Alm” [the pasture coated with ice] still bears witness to these agricultural losses. In Fiesch in the Swiss Valais, as early as 1678 the village vowed to hold an annual procession hoping to placate God into stopping the Aletschgletscher growing any further. In 2012 this procession still took place but - with papal permission - now with the opposite aim: that God would stop the Aletschgletscher from receding even further; it is their water reservoir. It’s remarkable that all such actions were instigated not by the authorities but by the local communities themselves.

According to the IPCC’s figures, an ordinary car causes 1kg of ice to melt for every 500m it is driven (for lovers of imperial measurements that’s more than 6lb of ice destroyed per mile driven). Maybe next time you drive your car you won’t only think of the price of petrol but also of several kilos of ice.

Gurgler Ferner from the Ramolhaus
Photo by Roman Huber

Typical glacier reference marks
Photo by Alexander Fuchs

Günther Groß taking glacier measurements
Photo by Alexander Fuchs

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