MONT BLANC, ALPS, FRANCE
September 21, 2006
On the top left, the Leschaux Glacier drains from the Grandes Jorasses. The Talefre Glacier comes from bottom left. At right, the Mer de Glace drains from beneath Mt. Blanc. Until recently, these glaciers came together, but now, with melting in full swing, they have retreated into their own basins. 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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