A few days ago, the CSIC geographer Nacho López-Moreno received a WhatsApp: “It’s falling down!” It was a link to the website of the Pineta refuge, one of the emblematic hostels in the Aragonese Pyrenees. For many, this is the first stage of a tough ascent to the foot of Monte Perdido, where one of the last remaining glaciers in Spain is located. The guards of the establishment warned that in recent days noises of collapse had been heard at the top of the valley. Suddenly, the river was muddy with gray mud. Was it possible that blocks were falling from the glacier?
A few days later, López-Moreno and his partner Francisco Rojas, researchers at the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology, decided to make an emergency ascent to check the state of the glacier, accompanied by EL PAÍS. They poured water and food into the rucksack and began to climb the steep path that in about three hours of effort climbs 1,500 meters of altitude to the Balcón de Pineta, one of the most majestic places in the Pyrenees, as can be seen in this video:
López-Moreno and the rest of his team have been studying the evolution of the Pyrenean glaciers for 20 years; the last ones left in Spain and throughout southern Europe. These are masses of perpetual ice accumulated on the slopes of the highest mountains in the range. The one at Monte Perdido is the largest in the Pyrenees together with those at Aneto and Maladeta; and the only one that remains within a National Park, that of Ordesa and Monte Perdido. Studying the evolution of these glaciers is a sad task, because scientists already know the end of the movie: they are all doomed to disappear in a few years. The only question is when it will happen and which one will be the last to melt.
Until now, the Monte Perdido was the most healthy of the 19 glaciers that remain in the Pyrenees —in 1850 there were more than 50—. In the western part (left) the ice reaches a thickness of up to 45 meters, like a 13-story building. The oldest layers date back at least 2,000 years, when the Romans ruled the Peninsula. López-Moreno had always thought that this would be the last glacier to disappear. Maybe it could last 30 years or more. But all this changed a few days ago, when the geographer climbed a rock on the Balcón de Pineta to see the state of the glacier in front of him.
“This is going to be a catastrophic year,” explains López-Moreno to EL PAÍS, as can be seen in this video:
In 2022, the perfect storm has broken out for these masses of ice, which are like rivers of frozen water that flow downhill advancing only a few centimeters a day. When a glacier stops moving, it is considered to have died, since it has already become a static iceberg that will turn black as stones and rocks fall from the upper peaks and the mud and organic matter are concentrated. The blacker a glacier is, the worse its condition; and this year Monte Perdido is darker than ever.
“The entire right half of the glacier is already dead; it has stopped advancing”, confirms López-Moreno. The last time this newspaper visited Monte Perdido, in 2018, a few small rocks that emerged from the ice could hardly be seen. These stones act as radiators: they accumulate the heat of the sun and accelerate melting. This year the ice has receded in a clear way until it uncovered a large cliff, a rock about 10 meters long. “This is going to be probably the worst year for this glacier since we have detailed records. In recent years, about 0.8 meters of thickness per year had been lost, but only in 2022 it is likely that two meters will have been lost, ”estimates López-Moreno.
Walking along the front of the glacier—its lower limit, where the ice ends and the rock begins—is awe-inspiring. Lying on the ground are the wooden beacons that marked where the edge of the glacier was in 2014. They are now several meters from the edge of the ice.
The only way for Monte Perdido to survive is for it to accumulate more snow in winter than it loses ice in summer. The lack of rainfall this year is obvious. The little snow that remains is not white, but brown. It is covered with sand and dust from the Sahara. Like stones, brownish earth concentrates more light and heat from the sun than white snow, thus accelerating melting. All this makes up a landscape that hardly resembles what someone would imagine of a high mountain glacier.
The night before ascending to the front of the glacier, the valley filled several times with the echo of blocks of ice that seemed to break off and fall down the slope. The next day, after a walk of about two hours, the team discovered where the noise was coming from.
On the left side, the highest and healthiest part of the glacier, a cavity about 15 meters high has been opened; an ice cave that wasn’t there last year. At the entrance, on the rocks, there are several blocks that have come loose. The largest of them is the size of a car and can hold a cubic meter of ice, that is, it contains a ton of frozen water. Further down there are many other smaller pieces, about 30 kilos. Along the front of the glacier you can see other smaller hollow areas and also holes in the middle of the ice where from time to time you can hear the noise of falling stones and the constant murmur of countless torrents of water that pass above and below. below the glacier with an exacerbated intensity. The refuge guards’ suspicions were correct: the Monte Perdido glacier is falling apart.
Point of no return
The CSIC team believes that this year marks a point of no return. It is practically impossible that neither this nor any other of the 19 ice masses in the Pyrenees can be saved from total disappearance. Worse still: if before he thought that Monte Perdido could last 30 years, López-Moreno now believes that the collapse of this glacier could come in just 10 years.
“Five years in a row of colder temperatures and abundant snowfall would hardly be enough to stabilize the current situation,” estimates the CSIC geographer. “If at least a decade of favorable conditions came, as happened in the 70s of the last century, there could be a modest improvement, but in no case would it be enough to recover what was lost in the last 20 years. An important advance of the glaciers would require a sustained period of several decades of cold and humid conditions equivalent to those of the Little Ice Age, between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries, which were due to important alterations in the arrival of solar radiation and an activity extraordinary volcanic Taking into account current climate conditions and greenhouse gas emission scenarios, it is extremely unlikely that this will happen in the coming decades, before the Pyrenean glaciers disappear, ”he adds.
Nearly all of Earth’s glaciers are on the verge of extinction, a global phenomenon linked to climate change and accelerated by ever-higher temperatures. The rise in thermometers is greater in high mountains than in the average of the planet and glaciers can become death traps. In July, a major collapse in Marmolada, in the Italian Alps, killed at least seven people and left 20 missing.
In Monte Perdido there is a wall of ice that hangs vertically over the abyss. If a large block fell from here it would fall to the Balcón de Pineta. In principle, it would reach an area where many mountaineers do not pass, since the normal route to the peak does not pass through there. In any case, visiting the Monte Perdido front is “dangerous,” warns López-Moreno. Stones are constantly falling and more blocks are likely to be broken this summer. The large cavity that has formed may become a tomb if there are more collapses.
The terrible image of the Spanish glaciers is very similar to that of the nine that remain on the French slope. “This year will undoubtedly record the melting record,” explains glaciologist Pierre René. Snow accumulation in winter has been low, 2.01 meters in 2022 compared to 2.75 on average in the last 20 years, he explains. Saharan sand in the snow and heat waves have further accelerated melting. The emblematic Ossoue glacier, the largest on the French side, had already lost 1.3 meters in thickness as of July 31 and the final data is expected to be much higher than the average melting in the last 20 years, of 1.7 meters . One of the most brutal signs of warming can be seen in this glacier: the artificial caves that were opened with dynamite at the beginning of the 20th century at the level of the ice are now suspended on a wall to which you have to climb, about 30 meters above.
This is how the Pyrenean glaciers are melting
waste of volume ( t = cubic ton )
One of the challenges of studying the effects of climate change in the Pyrenees is to obtain reliable data on temperatures that go back at least 30 years. In recent years, the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) has installed four automatic weather stations in the Aragonese Pyrenees that provide data in real time. They also have climatic series of temperatures taken manually in the high mountain refuges. For now there is no solid data to determine how much the Pyrenees has warmed, but there are two clear signs. This July has been the third warmest in Aragon since there are records. The temperatures reached in the Góriz refuge, located at an altitude of 2,200 meters, at the foot of Monte Perdido in the Ordesa valley, show a clear upward trend, according to Aemet.
There are still two months of melting ahead in the Pyrenees. In October, López-Moreno’s team will climb the glaciers again to scan them with a laser light system that determines the exact retreat; something they have been doing since 2011. The few new data they have on thickness date from 2021. The Aneto glacier lost 1.36 meters and Hell, 0.58. Much higher data is expected this year.
The decline of its glaciers puts Spain at the forefront of climatic and glaciological science. “These are very interesting processes because they are the prelude to what is going to happen in many other mountains on the planet,” admits López-Moreno. “But the truth is that it is very sad that it is in our mountains, in the Pyrenees, where we have to see such a deteriorated situation of glaciers,” he adds. The new bet of this scientist is that the last glacier in Spain is that of Infiernos.
Glaciers that turn killer
Francisco Rojas, a researcher at the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology, explains that “in much higher mountain ranges, such as the Andes in America or the Himalayas in Asia, the collapse of glaciers has wiped out entire towns.” “Around 24% of the total production of drinking water in La Paz would be affected in times of low water in a scenario without surrounding glaciers. In addition, there are large cities such as La Paz, in Bolivia, with some 800,000 inhabitants, which depend on these ice masses to obtain drinking water for millions of inhabitants. About 24% of all drinking water in La Paz would be affected in times of low water in a scenario without surrounding glaciers”, he adds. Most experts warn that this type of accident will be more and more common due to climate change.
credits
Design: Ruth Benito
Developing: Alexander Gallardo
Graphics: Mariano Zafra, Luis Sevillano and Jose A. Alvarez
Video: Luis Almodovar and Julia Jimenez
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