The Triglav Glacier will be gone in two months: take a look at the last pieces.
Slovenia’s natural monument – the famous Triglav Glacier – is finally saying goodbye. Only the last pieces of ice remain, and soon there will not even be enough “to cool a drink with”. Scientists predict that it could completely disappear already in October.
In fact, the glacier has not existed for several decades, explains geographer mag. Miha Pavšek from the Anton Melik Geographical Institute of ZRC SAZU. As he describes, we can currently still see the last pieces of ice of the former Triglav Glacier. As he illustrates, the volume of the ice pieces is now only 10–15 m³. Once it was compared to a football field, but now we can literally observe only the last pieces of visible ice.
In the area of the former glacier, where the terrain is a little flatter, there is a thick layer of scree, and beneath it a few smaller patches of ice are still hidden, in the size class of up to a few hundred square metres: “These ice patches may still persist for a few years. It is fossil ice, because it is somehow already like a fossil, like some remnant of the past that is simply hiding there.” As he points out, with this the 80-year institutional observation of the glacier on the surface is coming to an end.
Already at the end of the last century it was expected that the glacier would disappear in the next decade. However, the winters of the first decade of this century were somewhat snowier, and temperatures, at least in the high mountains, were around the long-term average. Rapid changes, however, have been recorded in the last 10 to 15 years, when temperatures rose sharply. When samples were taken in 2020, the ice in one part was more than four metres thick, but in 2023 there was no ice left in the same place, he explains. This ice was about 300 years old, so in one year what had taken several centuries to form flowed down into the valley. “So we expected the glacier to disappear. Especially after what has been happening elsewhere in the world this year. All summer we have been monitoring above-average temperatures.” As he adds, the average annual air temperature at Kredarica has been constantly above freezing since 2022 and is very likely to remain so at the end of this year as well.
The latest research confirms that no new ice has formed since the 1960s. As Pavšek explains: “In short, up there there was only what had formed in previous centuries and was then covered after each snow season with a more or less thick snow cover. The problem is, of course, when a poor winter with little snow is followed by an overly warm summer. And the snow from the last winter disappears from the surface of the glacier; then the glacier is particularly sensitive and vulnerable. Scree falls on it, and in recent years we have also had Saharan sand and dust. All of this causes this light body to become darker and even more susceptible to melting.”
“In our part of the Alps we have too low an altitude to have real glaciers that would still persist. And these glacial patches that existed were formed because we had, on the one hand, a fairly shady location, especially the glacier under Skuta, which is still in one piece for now, although it is less than half a hectare. This year that glacier has also been severely affected.”
There were also ideas about covering the Triglav Glacier with a special fabric in order to somewhat slow down the melting. But if you have a natural monument, you cannot do everything that comes to mind; that is not ethical: “Nature is eternal, but individual components of nature are not. And this object no longer exists. I do not know if it still makes sense to call it the Triglav Glacier. But the geographical name will probably still remain in memory. Also the nearby Ledeniški Pass, over which most mountaineers go to the summit of Triglav.”
Now, as he describes, cave ice spaces and the ice there have been at the centre of their interest for some time. In Slovenia we have more than 200 caves that contain ice. Some of these are being researched, and they are now already waiting for the first results of the analyses. And as he warns, even underground, where the microclimate is considered very stable, major changes are already being observed. The ice in these caves will also, as they estimate, probably melt over a period of several decades. As Pavšek adds, it will be interesting in the future to observe the Triglav Abyss, as it appears that we are dealing with one of the largest cave ice bodies in the Alps.
And what about the consequences of the disappearance of glaciers?
As Pavšek points out, the share of glacial water in our country is negligible, but still, if we combine it with snow, it can somewhat delay hydrological drought. Especially if we are dealing with a dry summer, snow and ice are actually the only surface water sources available. Now that is no longer the case and in summer we are almost entirely dependent on precipitation and, of course, groundwater. Years ago some mountain trails had to be relocated due to the retreat of the glacier, and very major problems with the water supply of high-mountain alpine huts are expected. They must seriously consider making stocks in spring and autumn so that they will have it available in summer when they are open. As he emphasises, the manager of the Triglav Lodge on Kredarica must also seriously consider reducing the capacity of overnight stays, as the pressure at the peak of the mountaineering season is too great; when determining the number of visitors, the availability of water must also be taken into account.
In this context he also highlighted the problem of wastewater from alpine huts, as many of them you ‘smell before you see’. The waters from the Triglav Glacier flow into Vrata, that is to the side of the Sava Dolinka, and into the Voje valley, on the Bohinj side, into the Sava Bohinjka. This means that if wastewater treatment plants and sewage are not arranged differently from how they are now, it will not be good. The rivers could be polluted already in their upper course, and this is not something to ‘play with’, because once such pollution is detected, it takes a very long time before it is naturally cleaned in the high-mountain karst area.
The problems do not stop at the national border. In our country a problem could also arise with the water flow of the Mura and the Drava, which are to a large extent filled with water from larger glaciers in neighbouring Austria. These are also rapidly shrinking there.
In the Alps – Switzerland, France, Austria – the local population will have even greater problems with the disappearance of glaciers, as this will mean difficulties in the supply of drinking water, he warns. When glaciers disappear, an unstable surface that was previously under them is exposed. And it was frozen, because it is mostly permafrost, permanently frozen ground, and of course the glacier, the mass of the glacier, was also pressing on it. And when this disappears, everything is exposed to surface processes, erosion and heavy precipitation, gravitational processes related to the force of gravity, he lists.
As he concludes, people are insufficiently aware that nothing is eternal and that we take nature too much for granted, that we still treat it as it suits us, take from it what we need and throw into it what we do not: “We will have to leave the comfort zone and the generations that are coming will have less than the previous ones. And I do not mean only money. They will also be deprived of a beautiful view of the remains of the former glacier, when the last pieces disappear this year and there will no longer be enough even to ‘cool’ a drink. Let us take nature as our example, which works in the long term. It sends us signals that we call natural disasters. Let us take time for nature, for ourselves, for each other.”
Source:
https://www.24ur.com/novice/slovenija/triglavskega-ledenika-v-dveh-mesecih-ne-bo-vec-poglejte-zadnje-koscke.html