Global Land Glacier thread for all land ice outside of Greenland and Antarctica

[chubbs]

going, going ......

http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2017/05/05/the-glaciers-are-going/

[Sugarloaf1989]

The Passo Stelvio glacier in Italy took a huge hit last week with the Southern European heatwave:

I went skiing in Europe in July 1985 with a summer camp. We visited Val Senales, Italy, Zermatt, Switzerland, Tignes, France and Stubai, Austria. All offered year round skiing back then, but now only Zermatt has the snow to go 365 anymore. It's amazing how much melting occurred in a bit over 30 years.

[sokolow]

The ÖAV glacier report for the preceding year is out. Press header summarized: The glaciers are melting. The retreat of Austrian glaciers is the largest on record since 1960 (when the series of measurements began); the average retreat is 25.2m, and the tongue of the Gepatschferner retreated 125m. Only one glacier measured showed no loss in length.

http://www.alpenverein.at/portal/service/presse/2018/gletscherbericht.php

Photo comparison of the Vermunt/Ochsentaler/Schneeglocken glacier in 1975, 1990, 2007, 2017 (top to bottom)

 

Average change in length and proportion of advancing (black), stationary (grey), and retreating (white field) glaciers among those measured.

[sokolow]

Also from earlier this year the preliminary report for 16/17 from the WGMS

http://wgms.ch/latest-glacier-mass-balance-data/

Quote

 

The average mass balance of the glaciers with available long-term observation series around the world continues to be negative, with tentative figures indicating a further thickness reduction of 1.1 meters water equivalent (m w.e.) during the hydrological year 2015. The new data continues the global trend in strong ice loss over the past few decades and brings the cumulative average thickness loss of the reference glaciers since 1980 at almost 20 m w.e. (see Figures 1 and 2). All so far reported mass balance values, given in Table 3, are tentative.

Figure 2: Mean cumulative mass balance of all reported glaciers (blue line) and the reference glaciers (red line).