GLACIER DU TRIENT, ALPS, SWITZERLAND
September 18, 2006
Packed full of ice just a few decades ago, the bare bedrock of the Trient Glacier's basin shows the effects of warming. The tongues of ice are in the process of melting, breaking apart and pulling back upslope. According to an American Geophysical Union publication (Geophysical Research Letters, July 15, 2006), “in the 1970's, about 5,150 Alpine glaciers covered a total area of 1,123 square miles (2,909 square kilometers). This represented a loss of about 35 percent of glacial area from 1850 to that time. Accelerated loss of ice cover since then has resulted in a total loss of 50 percent of the 1850 area, culminating in a volume loss of 5 to 10 percent of the remaining ice during the extraordinary warm year of 2003.
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