According to a study, artificial snow cannot save the glaciers. The melting can be slowed down locally with great difficulty. However, the glacier cannot be stabilized under any climate change, as a project on the Morteratsch Glacier, a glacier of the Bernina Group in the Swiss canton of Graubünden, has shown.
“If we really want to save the glaciers, we better start with climate protection,” Matthias Huss, a glaciologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich), said Tuesday at the request of the Keystone-SDA news agency. He investigated the effect of the world’s first such glacier rescue project on the Morterarsch Glacier, which was commissioned in February 2021.
The idea behind the project, called MortAlive, was astonishingly simple: As long as the ice on the glaciers is covered with snow, it cannot melt. Snow reflects more than bare ice. The energy of the sun’s rays is therefore thrown back and is not available for the melt.
“A Drop on a Glowing Plate”
Without intervention, the Morteratsch Glacier in the Upper Engadin is expected to lose between 56 and 71 percent of its volume over the next 40 years, the study said. With snowmaking, a good third to a quarter of this loss could be stopped by 2060. This would slow down the decline of the glacier somewhat. “In the long run, however, this is just a drop in the ocean,” says Huss.
However, the costs for this would be very high: about 150 million francs (almost 154 million euros) would have to be invested in the system for snowing the Morteratsch glacier. “In addition, there are the effects that such a construction project would have on the largely untouched nature in the high mountains of the Upper Engadine,” says Huss.
Artificial snow is not an alternative to climate protection
The necessary interventions in the high alpine environment and the considerable costs made it clear that the artificial snowing of large glacier areas could not be an alternative for rapid and effective climate protection. Experts called on Tuesday for more climate protection to deal with the consequences of global warming.
Source: Krone
I am an experienced and passionate journalist with a strong track record in news website reporting. I specialize in technology coverage, breaking stories on the latest developments and trends from around the world. Working for Today Times Live has given me the opportunity to write thought-provoking pieces that have caught the attention of many readers.
