Glacial Past of the Alps

Our time in Innsbruck is winding down and we are taking a couple of short trips in the Alps before returning to Utah.  We are currently in the Hohe Tauern National Park, an area of Austria I've never visited before.  We arrived today and spent some time visiting the very touristy but also very beautiful Krimml Waterfalls. 

There was a information exhibit at the base of the waterfalls (collectively they drop over 1200 vertical feet) that examined water in all it's forms, including ice and glaciers.  At it, I learned of some remarkable modeling work by Julien Seguinot and coauthors simulating the glacial history of the Alps over the last 120,000 years.  The video is simply mind boggling.  

It's difficult to comprehend a past in which the Alps were essentially entirely ice covered and glaciers were extending into the Alpine Foreland to the north and south of this remarkable mountain chain.  Below is a the simulated reconstruction for about 30,000 years ago showing such a situation.  The color fill is the simulated glacier surface velocity, so those glaciers issuing into the lowlands at the flanks of the Alps were moving fast and quite dynamic.  

All I can say is science is cool, especially cryospheric science (the study of the frozen water part of the Earth system)!  

End of German Glacier Skiing

Lift-served glacier skiing in Germany will come to an end this year when the Schneefernerkopf lift on the Zugspitze, Germany's highest peak and on the border with Austria, is dismantled.

Source: t-online. 

Glaciers across the Alps are shrinking and those on the Zugspitze are in rapid decline. The Shcneefernerkopf lift was on the Northern Schneeferner glacier (ferner is a word used for glacier in western Austria and southern Germany).  I took the photo below of the T-bar and glacier in August 2015 and even then it was suffering with essentially no seasonal snow coverage.

More information concerning the Northern Schneeferner and the rapidly declining remants of Germany's other three glaciers is available at https://zugspitze.de/glacier. 

Hintertux Glacier Closed for Skiing

I'm not sure how I missed this, but Austria's Hintertuxer Glacier Ski Resort, famous for being open 365 days a year, temporarily suspended ski operations in August. J2Ski first reported this on August 4.  Although I could not confirm the date of suspension, the resort web site still indicated on September 1 that there are no ski operations.

Screenshot of Hintertux Glacier Web Site, 2:46 PM MDT 1 September 2025

There are some reports that this is the first time they have suspended skiing in August, and ChatGPT told me that's the case.  On the other hand, I can find some social media posts that suggest they suspended operations last August.  It's hard to uncover the truth in the modern internet. 

Regardless, these are sad times, with declining viability of summer glacier skiing in the Alps.  

The good news is that it's turned colder in Austria and I even noticed some suggestions of a bit of snow on the web cams.  

Withering Summer Skiing

In March, Whistler Blackcomb announced that they would be cancelling summer ski camps indefinitely.  Yesterday, Powder Magazine reported that this was due to declining summer conditions on the Horstman Glacier.

Source: https://www.powder.com/news/whistler-blackcomb-summer-skiing-cancelled

Summer skiing is in decline worldwide.  I investigated this for my book, Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth.  In 1985 there were 32 operating glacier-skiing resorts in the Alps.  Today there are only a few that operate for a significant part of the summer (Passo Stelvio, Saas Fe, Kitzsteinhorn, Mölltal, Les 2 Alpes, Ignes, Val d'Isere, Cervina, Hintertux, Zermatt).  

Hintertux in Austria is the only ski area in the world still operating year round.  Zermatt used to, but gave up the past two years (maybe they will survive this year).  Hintertux moves Heaven and Earth to keep their skiing going through the summer.  

Source: Steenburgh (2023)

A couple of the summer skiing resorts above could probably operate year round if they wanted to.  Nevertheless, due to increasing temperatures and shrinking snowfields and glaciers, the future of summer skiing is not bright.  

The Fate of Alpine Glaciers

In the previous post, Climate Change Case Study: Austria, we examined recent trends in snow measures and potential impacts of future warming on skiing in the eastern Alps.  Declines in snow and snowcover are evident in the recent past and expected to continue in the next few decades in low- and mid-elevation areas.  High-elevation resorts in Tyrol, where resorts more commonly extend above 2000 meters, are the most "climate resilient" but will still feel the effects of climate change.  Ski area viability declines with ongoing greenhouse gas emissions and future warming.  One estimate suggest that with 2°C of warming relative to 1961–1990, only 64% of Austrian ski areas will be snow reliable.  With 4°C of warming, this number drops to 16%.  

In this post we look at the fate of glaciers in the Alps.  Glaciers are large masses of land-based, perennial ice, and they exist at upper-elevations throughout the Alps.  The map below shows the Alpine glacier coverage circa 2010.  Small glaciers are found from the far western to far eastern Alps, with the greatest concentration of large (5–100 square km) glaciers in the highest Alpine terrain from roughly Mt. Blanc to Zermatt (between about 6.75°E and 8°E).

Source: Huss (2012)

Large glaciers exist elsewhere in the Alps, however, including the Swiss Jungfrau (southeast of Bern), where the Aletsch Glacier glacier, the largest and longest in the Alps is found, the Ötztal and Stubai Alps of Austria's Tyrol, the Ortler and Rhaetian Alps of Italy southwest of Bolzano, and the Hohe Tauern in eastern Austria (between 12°E and 13°E).  

Monte Rosa and the Gorner Glacier above Zermatt

Glaciers in the Alps have been losing mass and retreating in recent decades.  This reflects what is happening across the globe.  The graph below shows the cumulative mass change in mass balance for reference (i.e., well-monitored over decades) glaciers (in cumulative meters of water equivalent) illustrating the downward trend.  Central Europe (blue) includes trends from Austrian (6), Swiss (5), French (3), Italian (2), and Spanish (1, Pyrenees) glaciers. 

It is not unusual for people to argue that these trends in the Alps are due to emergence from the Little Ice Age However, since 1990, a majority of the glacier loss, which is accelerating, is due to human-caused climate change. 

A sad reality for Alpine glaciers is that if we could stop global warming right now, they would probably still lose a substantial amount of volume.  Zekollari et al. (2019), estimated that if the 1988–2017 climate predominated through the 21st century, almost 40% of the glacier mass in the Alps would be lost.  They referred to this as committed loss.  

Source: Zekollari et al. (2019), with annotations added.

This is because the Alpine glaciers are currently out of equilibrium with the rapid warming that has occurred in recent decades.  Given time, even in a stationary climate, they will continue to retreat and shrink.  Not surprisingly, mass losses increase with emissions and warming.  In moderate and high emissions scenarios in which global temperatures increase by 2–4°C, more than 70% of the glacier mass of the Alps is gone.  In the csae of the latter, the only glacier remnants remaining in the Alps are in the high terrain from Mt. Blanc to Zermatt and the Swiss Jungfrau.

Source: Zekollari et al. (2019), with annotations added.

Last week, the Austrian Alpine Club released it's annual glacier survey and report.  They have been surveying glaciers in Austria for over 100 years, but this one got a lot of coverage because they warned that Austria will be largely ice free in 45 years.  In other words, perennial ice will largely be gone.  This is generally consistent with my scientific understanding, although I hope that perhaps some high-altitude glacier remnants may survive in the Austrian Alps if we can get our act together. 

Glacier Change on Mt. Rainier

Anyone who has lived in Seattle, as I had the good fortune to do from 1989 to 1995, knows it as "The Mountain."  On clear days, the snow-and-ice-covered mass that is Mt. Rainier looms over the city and serves as a beacon for mountain adventures.  I spent a great deal of time hiking on its lower flanks and even summited once.  Amongst many gems in the National Park System, Mt. Rainier National Park is one of the best.  

But as discussed in a New York Times article published earlier this week, the glaciers of Mt. Rainier are suffering (that link is not paywalled, but I'm not sure if there is a limit on how many people will be able to use it).  The article is based on a recently released National Park Service report available at at https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/DownloadFile/687937.   

As detailed in that report, glacier area on Mount Rainier declined 44% from 1896 to 2021, a net loss of just over 55 square kilometers of glacier area. 

Source: https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/DownloadFile/687937.

Not surprisingly volumes are also declining.  Quoting the report:

"All 28 glaciers at Mount Rainier are in retreat, losing an average of -0.430 km2 per year (-0.166 mi2 × yr-1) parkwide during the last 125 years. Since 2015, this rate has increased to -0.544 km2 per year (-0.210 mi2 × yr-1) parkwide. When looking at volumetric data, the Park has lost a total of -1.057 km3 (-0.254 mi3) of glacial mass since 1970, at a rate of about -0.021 km3 per year (-0.005 mi2 × yr-1)."

One glacier, the Stevens, has been removed from the glacier inventory and is now considered a perennial snowfield.  Two others, Pyramid and Van Trump, are on life support.  Glacier retreat is most pronounced on the south side of Mt. Rainier, but is also occurring on the north side.  

For the lovers of ice, these are sad times.  

Devastated Alpine Glaciers

It's been an awful year for glaciers and summer skiing in the European Alps. 

In 1985 there were 32 operating glacier skiing resorts in the European Alps. Not all of these operated year round, but most provided skiing for part of the warm season.  Only a handful remain today.  Two, Hintertux in Austria and Zermatt in Switzerland, have historically operated 365 days a year on upper-elevation glaciers.  Glacier areas in Saas Fe (Switzerland) and Passo Stelvio (Italy) are open in the summer but closed for other parts of the year.  Other resorts that operate for parts of the summer include Kitzsteinhorn (Austria), Mölltal (Austria), Les 2 Alpes (France), Tignes (France), and Cervinia (Italy).  Racing camps are probably a big part of their business.  

This year, however, Zermatt suspended operations on July 29.  As announced by Zermatt Bergbahnen,

"The mild winter of 2021/2022, which saw little snowfall, leaving only a thin covering of snow in Zermatt Bergbahnen's summer skiing area, combined with high summer temperatures and rainfall at over 4000 meters above sea level, necessitate a temporary discontinuation of summer skiing activities."

Summer skiing on glaciers typically requires seasonal snow.  The upper portions of glaciers are preferred for skiing because they often hold seasonal snow deep into or through the summer.  In recent years, tarps and snow farming have been used to preserve snow and extend the season.  I suspect at Zermatt there is a lack of sufficient seasonal snow to cover the firn (intermediate between snow and glacial ice) and glacial ice and fill crevasses.  Photos from Mölltaler Glacier in Austria from last summer and this summer show this has happened at that resort.  On August 6, 2021, a decent amount of seasonal snow cover remained on their upper-elevation terrain.  If you look carefully, you can see a couple of groomers to the right and what appear to be a few skiers and ski tracks near the top of that run.  

Source: foto-webcam.eu

This August 6, the resort is unskiable. Only a few patches of seasonal snow remain.  

Source: foto-webcam.eu

The Hintertux Glacier report from Ski Racing indicates a similar situation there, although they are still skiing (barely).  

Alpine glaciers have been losing mass for decades, but annual mass-loss rates have been increasing.  The most carefully studied glacier in Austria is the Hintereisferner southeast of Sölden and just north of the border with Italy (Scientists access the glacier via lifts at Val Senales in Italy).  Measurements illustrate a negative mass balance, meaning mass loss or summer melt exceeding winter accumulation, every year since 1983, with a trend towards larger mass losses each year.  

Source: World Glacier Monitoring Service (https://wgms.ch/products_ref_glaciers/hintereisferner-alps/)

Photos of the lower Hintereisferner show the retreat of the glacier front from 2018 to today, just a four year period.

Source: https://www.foto-webcam.eu/

Source: https://www.foto-webcam.eu/

We should see mass balance numbers for this past year fairly soon.  I suspect the numbers won't be pretty.  

Swiss Glaciers Continue Their Retreat

The Pizol Glacier in the Glarus Alps of northeastern Switzerland is one of 500 small Swiss glaciers that have disappeared since 1900.  Photo: Matthias Huss/Swiss Academy of Sciences

It was an exceptionally good snow year in the northern Alps this year, and May was quite cool.  I was wondering if this might lead to a net positive mass balance for Alpine glaciers this year, but at least in Switzerland (and I suspect elsewhere), it wasn't to be. 

As reported today by the Swiss Academy of Sciences, glacier melt levels during this summer's heat waves reached record levels and in the net, glacier mass loss for the year exceeded accumulation, yielding a net mass loss of 2% of Switzerland's total glacier volume.  Over the past five years, the rate of mass loss exceeds anything previously observed in records that go back for more than a century.  

Perhaps most disheartening is that eastern Switzerland saw exceptional snows during the winter, yet losses were higher than average for the past ten years.  I haven't seen the latest from Austria yet, but it experienced a similar winter and summer compared to eastern Switzerland and I suspect the story will be similar.  Below is a tweet from @robbieshone on October 13 showing scientists taking field observations to determine the annual mass balance of the Hintereisferner, which is Austria's best studied glacier.

I joined a small group of #glaciologists led by Dr. Rainer Prinz from the ACINN @uniinnsbruck, to carry out the annual mass balance of the Hintereisferner. Rainer's team spent 2 days undertaking numerous #scientific jobs across the whole glacier where t... https://t.co/39OuGlJf7s pic.twitter.com/W3Nu4Y2z6y

— Robbie Shone (@robbieshone) October 13, 2019

Below are photos of the Hintereisferner (from https://www.foto-webcam.eu/webcam/hintereisferner1/) in mid June and early August, illustrating the loss of the remarkable snowfall from the 2018/19 winter. 

A Letter to the Future

Iceland's Okjökull glacier once capped the Ok Volcano, but was declared dead in 2014.  This past weekend, a plaque was placed on Ok that included a letter to the future.

Source: Forbes/Boyer/Cymene Howe

Talk about a great way to remind people that indeed we do know what is happening, but we also know what needs to be done.  Really, we have known this for some time, but the "cracks" in the climate system are really starting to open up now and people are seeing it with their own two eyes. 

We could use a few more of these letters.  Here's one for the Wasatch Mountains. 

Update on Eastern Alpine Glaciers

It was a pretty good snow year in the eastern Alps, but due to global warming, it's damn hard to have a year in which there isn't a net loss of glacier mass.

When we left Innsbruck at the end of June, the seasonal snow still covered much of the high eastern Alps, but that's changed in the past three weeks.  Seasonal snow on the Hintereisferner, Austria's best studied glacier, is disappearing rapidly, leaving grey glacier ice. 

Hintertuxer Glacier is Austria's only year-round ski area.  Here too, the deep seasonal snow cover is disappearing rapidly. 

Finally, there is the Schneeferner on Zugspitze, which is to the right of the building pictured below. It's beginning to suffer too.

I suspect at the end of summer, we'll see a net loss of mass for most of the glaciers in the eastern Alps.  Even in a good snow year, the summertime temperatures that exist today do their damage.  Additionally, the prolonged exposure of grey glacier ice results in increased absorption of solar radiation, further accelerating the loss. 

The Disappearing Glaciers of the European Alps

I am spending the first part of this week at the European Geophysical Union (EGU) meeting in Vienna.  One of the things that I like about meetings of this type is the opportunity to learn about advances in Earth sciences disciplines outside of the atmospheric sciences.

Glaciology talks has always been a personal favorite because of my love for snow and ice and the fact that they contain many beautiful photos and analyses.  The science of glaciology has been transformed in recent years by advances in numerical modeling, observational techniques, and remote sensing from space, aircraft or the ground.  Sadly, these advances, while providing greater detail and information than ever before, confirm the dramatic loss of glacial ice that is occurring around the world.

My host institution here in Austria, the University of Innsbruck, is a world leader in glaciology.  Glaciers that they study extensively include the Hintereisferner (HEF), Kesselwandferner (KWF) and Guslarferner (GF) in the Ötztal Alps (pictured below). 

Source: Strasser et al. (2018), photo by Christoph Mayer

The Hintereisferner has been comprehensively studied since the 1950s and is classified as a 'reference glacier' by the World Glacier Monitoring Service because of it's long record of continuous observation.  It has retreated significantly since reaching it's Little Ice Age maximum in the 1800s.

Source: Kuhn and Lambrecht (2007)

Annual mass balance data from the Hintereisferner and Kesselwandferner show a trend toward years with substantial mass loss since observations were first collected in 1952.  In these plots, years with mass gain are indicated by blue bars and mass loss by red bars, with the length of the bars proportional to the gain or loss.  

Source: Strasser et al. (2018)

Such trends are seen for most glaciers in the Alps.

Atmospheric and glacier modeling is getting to the point where scientists are now beginning to model glacier mass balance change through the end of the century.  Below is an example presented yesterday by Harry Zekollari and available (with reviews) from the journal The Cryosphere.  Under a scenario where the increase in global mean temperature is limited to 2˚C (RCP2,6, top figure below), the total loss of Alpine glacier mass volume is about 50%, although some glaciers lose substantial mass (dark dots below), while high-altitude glaciers lose less (light dots below).  Under a high-greenhouse-gas emissions scenario (RCP8.5), nearly all of the glacial ice in the Alps is gone by the end of the century.  A small amount of ice remains in the Mer de Glace on Mt. Blanc and other high glacier regions of France and Switzerland.  

Source: Zakollari et al. (2019)

Fascinating science, but also very sobering if you are a lover of snow and ice. 

Escape from Utah

In desperate need of a brief vacation and a recharge of the batteries, we spent today at one of my favorite places in the world, Mt. Rainier National Park.  There's pretty much everything you could possibly want here: big relief, snow, ice, big trees, fascinating weather, amazing geology, and, to top it all off, Northwest beer.  

We spent today at Sunrise on the northeast side of the park.  What's great about Sunrise is you can spend hours walking through meadows and alpine areas above timberline with very little climbing.  Further, you can gape at huge relief and the largest glacier in the lower 48, the Emmons.  

In the photo below (click to enlarge), the summit of Mt. Rainier loops nearly 10,000 vertical feet above the upper White River Valley.  Little Tahoma, a peak reaching over 11,000 feet that would otherwise look like Mt. Hood, is dwarfed by the hulk of Rainier.  The Emmons Glacier issues from the summit of Mt. Rainier and descends into the upper White River Valley.  A huge portion of the lower glacier is buried in debris from a huge slide in 1963.  The White River emerges from the toe of the glacier, which is buried under this debris.  A beautiful lake, tinted turquoise by glacial rock flour, completes the picture.  

I like the photo below because it helps to put the scale of the area into perspective.  We're standing on 7,000 foot Burroughs Mountain, with the crevasses of the Emmons Glacier in the distance.

Here's something else that we found interesting.  In this relatively flat area, we found trees that had been snapped off deposited on the ground.  They were scattered about, all generally facing the same way, but with no stumps anywhere to be seen. 

Here's another look. 

What you can't see in this photo is the steep avalanche slope to the right.  Apparently these trees were snapped off upslope and deposited in the runout zone.  There weren't many large trees in the avalanche path, so apparently it took just a few and laid them to rest in the meadow.