Switzerland: Glaciers have shrunk by half since Nineteen Thirties, examine finds

A examine on Switzerland’s 1,400 glaciers has discovered that they’re shedding quantity and the method appears to be like to have accelerated over the previous few years.

Polytechnic college ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute on Forest, Snow and Landscape Research on Monday introduced their findings based mostly on topographical modifications to glaciers since 1931.

Researchers found that the quantity of ice had shrunk by half over the previous 85 years till 2016, and since then glaciers have receded an additional 12%.

“Glacier retreat is accelerating. Closely observing this phenomenon and quantifying its historical dimensions is important because it allows us to infer the glaciers’ responses to a changing climate,” stated co-author of the examine Daniel Farinotti.

How the researchers arrived at their conclusion

Their examine, revealed within the scientific journal The Cryosphere, used materials from the TerrA picture archive, which covers about 86% of Switzerland’s glacierised space, analysing round 21,700 pictures taken between 1916 and 1947.

For their reconstruction, the glaciologists used so-called stereophotogrammetry — a method used to find out the character, form and place of any object on the premise of picture pairs.

“If we know the surface topography of a glacier at two different points in time, we can calculate the difference in ice volume,” lead examine writer Erik Schytt Mannerfelt stated.

Not all glaciers have been shedding ice on the identical charges, the researchers stated. Altitude, quantities of particles on the glaciers, and the flatness of a glacier’s “snout,” its lowest half and essentially the most susceptible to melting, all have an effect on the speeds of retreat.

The researchers additionally discovered that two intervals, the Nineteen Twenties and Nineteen Eighties, really skilled sporadic progress in glacier mass, however that was overshadowed by the broader development of decline.