Alps – Desdemona Despair

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology glaciologist and head of the Swiss measurement network “Glamos”, Matthias Huss, work at the Rhone glacier with his team near Goms, Switzerland, Friday, 16 June 2023. A top glacier watcher warned that a warm early summer and a heat wave could have caused severe glacier melt across Switzerland, threatening to make 2023 the second-worst year for ice loss after a record thaw in 2022. Photo: Matthias Schrader / AP Photo

September 10, 2023

Swiss glacier watcher warns 2023 heat wave threatens severe melt again after record 2022 – “We can definitely say that we had very high melting in Switzerland and in Europe in general”

By Jamey Keaten 1 September 2023 GENEVA (AP) – A top glacier watcher has warned that a warm early summer combined with a heat wave last week may have caused severe glacier melt in Switzerland, threatening to make 2023 its second-worst year for ice loss after a record thaw last year. Matthias Huss of the GLAMOS […]

Map showing the heat index forecast in the United States on 24 August 2023. 110 million people in the U.S. were exposed to dangerous heat today. Graphic: The Washington Post

August 24, 2023

Heat dome shatters all-time U.S. records as Europe roasts – “Brutal” heat wave brings triple-digit temperatures from Chicago to New Orleans – 110 million people exposed to dangerous heat

By Andrew Freedman 24 August 2023 (Axios) – In a summer featuring countless heat domes and record-high temperatures and heat indices, the season appears to have saved the worst for last. The big picture: A sweltering, stagnant air mass is draped across the Central U.S., resulting in “dangerous,” “searing” and “brutal” heat. Meanwhile, southern Europe is also seeing another bout of […]

Global annual mean temperature anomalies with respect to pre-industrial conditions (1850-1900) for six global temperature data sets (1850-2022). Graphic: WMO

April 30, 2023

WMO annual report highlights continuous advance of climate change – “While greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and the climate continues to change, populations worldwide continue to be gravely impacted by extreme weather and climate events”

Geneva, 21 April 2023 (WMO) – From mountain peaks to ocean depths, climate change continued its advance in 2022, according to the annual report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Droughts, floods, and heatwaves affected communities on every continent and cost many billions of dollars. Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest extent on record […]

Regional glacier mass change and contributions to sea level rise from 2015 to 2100. Discs show global and regional projections of glacier mass remaining by 2100 relative to 2015 for global mean temperature change scenarios. Discs are scaled based on each region’s contribution to global mean sea level rise from 2015 to 2100 for the +2°C scenario by 2100 relative to preindustrial levels, and nested rings are colored by temperature change scenarios showing normalized mass remaining in 2100. Regional sea level rise contributions >1 mm SLE for the +2°C scenario are printed in the center of each disc. The horizontal bars below each disc show time series of area-averaged annual mass balance from 2015 to 2100 for +1.5°C (top bar) and +3°C (bottom bar) scenarios. The colorbar is saturated at −2.5 m w.e., but minimum annual values reach −4.2 m w.e. in Scandinavia. Graphic: Rounce, et al., 2022 / Science

January 7, 2023

Half of glaciers will be gone by 2100 even under Paris 1.5C accord, study finds

By Phoebe Weston 5 January 2023 (The Guardian) – Half the planet’s glaciers will have melted by 2100 even if humanity sticks to goals set out in the Paris climate agreement, according to research that finds the scale and impacts of glacial loss are greater than previously thought. At least half of that loss will happen […]

Hoof prints left by Camargue bulls mark a section of pasture encrusted with salt on the Raynaud ranch in Camargue, southern France, 23 September 2022. As soil salt levels rise due to drought and reduced river flow from the Rhone River, the land traditionally used by bull breeders like the Raynaud family is becoming more and more difficult to maintain as a suitable pace to raise animals. Photo: Daniel Cole / AP Photo

December 10, 2022

In southern France, drought, rising seas threaten traditions – “The sea level rises on our coast and takes more and more of our land”

By Daniel Cole 30 October 2022 SAINTES-MARIE DE LA MER, France (AP) – In a makeshift arena in the French coastal village Aigues-Mortes, young men in dazzling collared shirts come face-to-face with a raging bull. Surrounded by the city’s medieval walls, the men dodge and duck the animal’s charges while spectators let out collective gasps. […]

Landsat images from 21 February 2000 (left) and 27 July 2019 (right) illustrating glacier retreat on top of Mount Kilimanjaro (United Republic of Tanzania). Photo: U.S. Geological Survey

November 19, 2022

Kilimanjaro’s and Africa’s last glaciers to go by 2050, says UN – “What is quite unprecedented in the historical record is how quickly this is happening”

By Patrick Hughes 3 November 2022 (BBC News) – Glaciers across the globe – including the last ones in Africa – will be unavoidably lost by 2050 due to climate change, the UN says in a report [UNESCO finds that some iconic World Heritage glaciers will disappear by 2050 –Des]. Glaciers in a third of […]

Near-surface temperature differences relative to the 1981–2010 average for 2022 to September. The map shows the median anomaly calculated from six data sets: HadCRUT5, ERA5, JRA-55, GISTEMP, NOAAGlobalTemp, and Berkeley Earth. Graphic: WMO

November 7, 2022

State of the Global Climate 2022: Sea level rise accelerates, European glacier melt shatters records, extreme weather causes devastation – “What climate scientists have warned about for decades is upon us”

By Seth Borenstein 6 November 2022 SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) – Earth’s warming weather and rising seas are getting worse and doing so faster than before, the World Meteorological Organization warned Sunday in a somber note as world leaders started gathering for international climate negotiations. [Eight warmest years on record witness upsurge in climate change impacts –Des] […]

Projected changes in surface temperatures in the Alps, 2021-2050. The Alpine region experiences a higher temperature rise than peri-Alpine areas or at least that the temperature changes start earlier. Large parts of Bavaria, Lombardy and other regions depend on ecosystem services provided by the Alps. Decreasing quantities of water and a reduced reliability of supply will become major issues in the coming decades. This affects not only the drinking water supply but also agriculture, energy production, and industrial cooling demand. Graphic: FAU

October 29, 2022

Water woes loom in the Alps amid climate change – “Reduced quantities of water and limited reliability of water supply will be a major issue in the coming decades”

By Jamey Keaten 27 October 2022 BRIG, Switzerland (AP) – A battle is brewing around Europe’s rooftop over the planet’s most precious resource. The crystal-clear waters issuing from the Alps could become increasingly contested as the effects of climate change and glacier melt become more apparent. Italy wants them for crop irrigation in the spring […]

Percent change in ice volume for Swiss glaciers, 2001-2022. Melt rates in 2022 far exceeded the previous records from the hot summer of 2003. Glaciers in Switzerland lost around 3 cubic kilometres of ice in 2022, more than 6 percent of the remaining volume. By way of comparison, up to now, years with an ice loss of 2 percent have been described as “extreme”. The loss was particularly dramatic for small glaciers. Graphic: M. Huss / Swiss Academy of Sciences

October 21, 2022

2022 heat wave drove unprecedented melt of Swiss glaciers – “2022 was a disastrous year for Swiss glaciers: all ice melt records were smashed by the great dearth of snow in winter and continuous heat waves in summer”

By Jamey Keaten 28 September 2022 GENEVA (AP) – Switzerland’s glaciers are melting like never before, an academic study released Wednesday found, with their ice volume declining by 6% this year amid rising concerns about global warming and a summer heat wave that swept across Europe. The Swiss Academy of Sciences reported that the shrinkage […]

Chairlifts are pictured over ski slopes closed due to lack of snow, at the ski resort of The Mourtis in Boutx, France, 10 February 2020. Photo: Regis Duvignau / REUTERS

February 22, 2020

The ski resort with no snow contemplates a warmer future – “If the snow is not there, we have to sell something else”

By Regis Duvignau and Antony Paone 12 February 2020 LE MOURTIS, France (Reuters) – This year’s winter in France has, so far, been the mildest in more than a century, and that has had a direct impact on the ski resort of Le Mourtis, in the Pyrenees mountains. “There’s no snow,” said French holidaymaker Frederic […]