Climate crisis: worrying effects on Mont Blanc

"The climate crisis is gathering pace. Despite the abundant late snowfalls in recent months, the Alps are suffering from the strong heat wave and the zero temperature has already been felt at high altitudes, reaching as high as 5,200 metres last Saturday (10 August, ndr), with worrying effects even on Mont Blanc, a mountain that is becoming increasingly fragile and sees its glaciers melt year by year. This is why Caravan of Glaciers 2024 will begin its itinerant journey along the Alpine glaciers precisely from France and Mont Blanc to denounce what is happening, but also to remind us of the importance of putting in place good practices and adaptation actions".

This is how Vanda Bonardo, head of Legambiente's Caravan of Glaciers 2024 campaign, explains the decision to start Legambiente's campaign, now in its fifth edition, right from the roof of Europe. The first stage starts in France on Sunday 18 and Monday 19 August to monitor the health of the Mer de Glace glacier.

The Legambiente initiative, in collaboration with Cipra Italia and the scientific partnership of the Italian Glaciological Committee, will then continue in Valle D'Aosta (19-22 August), Piedmont (22-26 August), Lombardy (28-31 August), Friuli/Slovenia (31 August-5 September), and Veneto (5-9 September) to observe the Valpelline glacier, the Flua glacier, the Fellarìa glacier, the Julian Alps, and Marmolada, respectively.

In August 2024, the zero temperature was recorded at high altitude. The meteorological station installed at 4,750 metres on the Colle Major, on Mont Blanc, the highest in Europe, observed a temperature that remained above zero for 33 consecutive hours, from midnight on 10 August to 9 a.m. the following day: 'A datum that is not normal,' stressed Marco Cappio Borlino, technical director of Arpa Valle d'Aosta: 'What is most surprising is the fact that there was no night-time drop. Because during the day the temperature rises, there are excursions, but they are excursions compared to a cold night. It is really abnormal at that altitude not to have night frost. Because the consequence is the melting of snow and ice'.

On 10 August, as Bonardo recalled, the temperature zero in Piedmont reached 5,206 metres, touching the record of nine years ago, when it had risen to 5,296 metres. A measurement conducted by Arpa: the maximum temperature measured at Capanna Margherita, on Monte Rosa, at an altitude of 4,554 metres, reached 9 degrees, two tenths less than the 9.2 degrees of last summer, three tenths below the record, 9.3 degrees, of 2015. The snow that still covered the glaciers turned into water, accelerating the melting of the glaciers: "From Capanna Margherita, where Arpa Piemonte has a weather station that is the second highest in Europe and is the highest observatory in Europe," explained Secondo Barbero, director general of Arpa Piemonte, "it can be observed that the abundant snow cover still present at high altitudes is transforming and reducing rapidly, releasing large quantities of melt water; the ice free of snow is exposed to strong melting, contributing to the reduction of glacial masses."