Geologists turn to remote tools as Italy's Ventina glacier melts fast
After this year's hot summer, geologists discovered that the simple stakes used as benchmarks to measure the glacier's retreat each year are now buried under rockslides. Debris has made the terrain too unsteady for future in-person visits.
The Lombardy Glaciological Service said Monday that it will now use drone imagery and remote sensing to keep track of the ongoing shrinkage.
Geologists say that the Ventina glacier has already lost 1.7 kilometres in length since the first measuring benchmarks were positioned at the front of the glacier in 1895.
The melting has accelerated in recent years, with the glacier losing 431 metres in the last 10 years, nearly half of that since 2021, the service said. It's another example of how accelerating global warming is melting and shrinking Europe's glaciers, causing a host of environmental and other impacts.
'While we could still hope until the 1980s that there would be normal cycles (of retraction) or at least a contained retraction, in the last 40 years something truly striking has occurred,' said Andrea Toffaletti, a member of the Lombardy Glaciological Service.
Hot summers and less snow are melting Italy's glaciers
Italy's mountain glaciers, which are found throughout the Alps and Dolomites in the north and along the central Apennines, have been receding for years, thanks to inadequate snowfall in the winter and record-setting hot summers.
Glaciers always melt some in summer, with the runoff fueling mountain streams and rivers.
But the hot summers are 'no longer able to guarantee the survival of the winter snowpack,' which keeps the glacier intact, Toffaletti said.
'In order to regenerate and remain in balance, a certain amount of residual snow from the winter must remain on the glacier's surface at the end of the summer. And this is happening less and less frequently,' said Toffaletti.
According to the Lombardy service, the Alps represent a climate hotspot, recording double the global average of temperature increases since pre-industrial times, resulting in the loss of over 64 per cent of the volume of Alpine glaciers.
In February, the journal Nature reported on a study showing the world's glaciers lost ice at the rate of about 231 billion tonnes annually from 2000 to 2011, but that quickened to about 314 billion tonnes annually over about the next decade.
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Euronews
2 days ago
- Euronews
Geologists turn to remote tools as Italy's Ventina glacier melts fast
Italy's Ventina glacier, one of the biggest in northern Lombardy, has melted so much due to climate change that geologists can no longer measure it the way they have for the past 130 years. After this year's hot summer, geologists discovered that the simple stakes used as benchmarks to measure the glacier's retreat each year are now buried under rockslides. Debris has made the terrain too unsteady for future in-person visits. The Lombardy Glaciological Service said Monday that it will now use drone imagery and remote sensing to keep track of the ongoing shrinkage. Geologists say that the Ventina glacier has already lost 1.7 kilometres in length since the first measuring benchmarks were positioned at the front of the glacier in 1895. The melting has accelerated in recent years, with the glacier losing 431 metres in the last 10 years, nearly half of that since 2021, the service said. It's another example of how accelerating global warming is melting and shrinking Europe's glaciers, causing a host of environmental and other impacts. 'While we could still hope until the 1980s that there would be normal cycles (of retraction) or at least a contained retraction, in the last 40 years something truly striking has occurred,' said Andrea Toffaletti, a member of the Lombardy Glaciological Service. Hot summers and less snow are melting Italy's glaciers Italy's mountain glaciers, which are found throughout the Alps and Dolomites in the north and along the central Apennines, have been receding for years, thanks to inadequate snowfall in the winter and record-setting hot summers. Glaciers always melt some in summer, with the runoff fueling mountain streams and rivers. But the hot summers are 'no longer able to guarantee the survival of the winter snowpack,' which keeps the glacier intact, Toffaletti said. 'In order to regenerate and remain in balance, a certain amount of residual snow from the winter must remain on the glacier's surface at the end of the summer. And this is happening less and less frequently,' said Toffaletti. According to the Lombardy service, the Alps represent a climate hotspot, recording double the global average of temperature increases since pre-industrial times, resulting in the loss of over 64 per cent of the volume of Alpine glaciers. In February, the journal Nature reported on a study showing the world's glaciers lost ice at the rate of about 231 billion tonnes annually from 2000 to 2011, but that quickened to about 314 billion tonnes annually over about the next decade.
AFP
08-08-2025
- AFP
Major climate-GDP study under review after facing challenge
But a re-analysis by Stanford University researchers in California, released August 6, 2025, challenges the conclusion of the climate paper (archived here and here). It found the projected hit to be about three times smaller and broadly in line with earlier estimates, after excluding an anomalous result tied to Uzbekistan (archived here). The saga may culminate in a rare retraction, with Nature telling AFP August 6 it will have "further information to share soon" -- a move seized upon by climate-change skeptics following the publication of the re-analysis and pre-print correction of the paper. Both the original authors -- who have acknowledged errors in their methodology and data processing -- and the Stanford team hoped the transparency of the review process would bolster, rather than undermine public confidence in science. Climate scientist Maximilian Kotz and co-authors at the renowned Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) published the original research in April 2024, using datasets from 83 countries to assess how changes in temperature and precipitation affect economic growth (archived here). Influential paper It became the second most cited climate paper of the year, according to the UK-based Carbon Brief outlet, and informed policy at the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, US federal government and others (archived here and here). AFP was among numerous media outlets to report on it. Yet the eye-popping claim that global GDP would be lowered by 62 percent by the year 2100 under a high emissions scenario soon drew scrutiny. "That's why our eyebrows went up because most people think that 20 percent is a very big number," scientist and economist Solomon Hsiang, one of the researchers behind the re-analysis, also published in Nature, told AFP August 5, 2025 (archived here). When they tried to replicate the results, Hsiang and his Stanford colleagues spotted serious anomalies in the data surrounding Uzbekistan. Specifically, there was a glaring mismatch in the provincial growth figures cited in the Potsdam paper and the national numbers reported for the same periods by the World Bank. "When we dropped Uzbekistan, suddenly everything changed. And we were like, 'whoa, that's not supposed to happen,'" Hsiang said. "We felt like we had to document it in this form because it's been used so widely in policy making." The authors of the 2024 paper acknowledged methodological flaws, including currency exchange issues, and on August 6 uploaded a corrected version, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. "We're waiting for Nature to announce their further decision on what will happen next," Kotz told AFP. He stressed that while "there can be methodological issues and debate within the scientific community," the bigger picture was unchanged: climate change will have substantial economic impacts in the decades ahead. Undeniable climate impact Frances Moore, an associate professor in environmental economics at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in either the original paper or the re-analysis, agreed (archived here). She told AFP on August 5 that the paper's correction did not alter overall policy implications. Projections of an economic slowdown by the year 2100 are "extremely bad" regardless of the Kotz-led study, she explained, and "greatly exceed the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to stabilize the climate, many times over." "Future work to identify specific mechanisms by which variation in climate affects economic output over the medium and long-term is critical to both better understand these findings and prepare society to respond to coming climate disruption," she also noted. Image Riverbank dwellers carry banana produce over the dry Solimoes riverbed in the Pesqueiro community in Manacapuru, Amazonas state, northern Brazil, on September 30, 2024 (AFP / MICHAEL DANTAS, MICHAEL DANTAS) Hsiang said even smaller impacts on GDP should be considered "enough that it makes a lot of sense to invest in reducing climate change." "It's very cost effective," he told AFP. Heat stress on the economy manifests through various mechanisms, he said. For example, workforce productivity dips at high temperatures, risks of potential health complications rise, while machinery also deteriorates (archived here, here and here). "The very hottest countries in the world, near the tropics, we see this effect even more magnified," Hsiang said. "Every one degree of warming for them is a much larger impact on their economy." 'Final stages' Asked whether Nature would be retracting the Potsdam paper, Karl Ziemelis, the journal's physical sciences editor, did not answer directly but said an editor's note was added to the paper in November 2024 "as soon as we became aware of an issue" with the data and methodology (archived here). "We are in the final stages of this process and will have further information to share soon," he told AFP August 6. The episode comes at a delicate time for climate science, under heavy fire from the US government under President Donald Trump's second term, as misinformation about the impacts of human-driven greenhouse gases abounds. Yet even in this environment, Hsiang argued, the episode showed the robust nature of the scientific method. "One team of scientists checking other scientists' work and finding mistakes, the other team acknowledging it, correcting the record, this is the best version of science," he said. AFP has previously reported on other flawed reports and predatory studies on climate change.
LeMonde
08-08-2025
- LeMonde
On an Indonesian island, traces of human presence over one million years old have been discovered
After the discovery in 2003 of the so-called Flores Man on the Indonesian island of Flores, and the subsequent unearthing of human remains on the Philippine island of Luzon – which also lent its name to a distinct species – researchers turned their curiosity to another Indonesian island: Sulawesi (also known as Celebes). This vast landmass, spanning several hundred thousand square kilometers, had already yielded some prehistoric secrets, including tools at least 194,000 years old. However, these finds could not compete with the artifacts from Flores, dated at 1.02 million years old, or those from Luzon, around 700,000 years old. "We have searched for many years for evidence of the earliest humans of Sulawesi, so it is a great relief to finally find it," said Adam Brumm, an archaeologist and co-author of the study published on August 6 in the journal Nature. Together with colleagues from Australian and Indonesian universities, the team excavated the sediment layers at the Calio site, progressing 10 centimeters at a time. This meticulous approach paid off, allowing them to unearth seven flint tools.
