An alarming report from Austria’s Alpine Club warns that Austria’s glaciers retreated 28.7 metres in 2022, compared to 11 metres the year before, marking a sharp increase that the club called a ‘Red Alert,’ predicting that the country’s glaciers could be completely gone by 2075.
The Alpine Club, which has been tracking glacier advance and retreat since 1891, says that “never before… has there been a greater loss of glaciers.” It added that “The drastic glacier retreat undoubtedly makes the consequences of the anthropogenic massively intensified climate change clear,” and added that “The touristic development of glacier areas is simply no longer justifiable at a time when the climate crisis is already having an enormous impact on the glaciers.”
The issue is, of course worldwide. A study in the journal Science published in January estimates that half the earth’s glaciers and a quarter of their mass will melt away by the end of the century even if the Paris Agreement’s target of holding warming to 1.5C is met. At present, warming is on a pace to rise by 2.7C.
