“a thousand” ways the melting Earth affects us

This weekend, the Swiss government announced that it had changed its border with Italy due to the melting of the Alpine glaciers that separate the two countries. As ice masses change, old borders shift and need to be redrawn and what was Switzerland yesterday is now Italy. At almost the same time, it was learned that sea ice cover over the Arctic had already reached its minimum extent for the year after melting at an accelerating rate since March 14. It lost 70% of its surface area: 10.7 million km2 in six months.

Europe and the Arctic Circle are two of the regions on the planet warming the most due to climate change. Weather chaos coming down from the Arctic due to polar ice melting or adjustments geopolitics at the borders, as striking as it is to have to bundle up in June or change official maps, these are just two of the many ways in which the melting of the cryosphere – sea ice, lake ice, glaciers and frozen ground – which affects us as the Earth’s temperature increases.

Closer examples? the gradual disappearance of skiing which roams the Spanish peaks and the avalanches of rocks or ice as the mountain slopes collapse

Changes to maps forced by climate change

Switzerland and Italy meet in the Alps. According to the Swiss government, 40 kilometers of border between the two countries are marked by frozen water: glaciers and snowfields that move naturally, but are now moving sensitively and quickly with the excess heat derived from the greenhouse effect. And with this movement, the ridges that mark the borders between states shift. The border is aligned with glaciers that are retreating due to climate change.

In this case, both countries were forced to redefine their national maps in the Matterhorn summit area (also known as the Matterhorn). Glaciers in the Alps have been in sharp decline for decades: they lost 24 meters in thickness between 1997 and 2017, according to Copernicus data, in what scientists have described as “extreme glacial melting”.

If humanity were able to reduce all its greenhouse gas emissions at once, global warming would continue for one or two centuries due to the inertia of the cryosphere and hydrosphere.

Benito Fuentes Lopez.
— AEMET Meteorologist

On Swiss territory alone, these rivers of ice have decreased by 10% over the last two years, reveals the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network. Indeed, last July, the remains of a German mountaineer who disappeared in 1986 when a large part of one of the Matterhorn glaciers melted were found. Spain is not immune to this process and the glaciers of the Pyrenees lost a fifth of their surface area and six meters of thickness between 2011 and 2020.

“Maybe in Spain we give it less importance because there is less snow, but the cryosphere is an essential element of the climate,” explains Benito Fuentes López, meteorologist at AEMET. To attest to this importance, Fuentes explains that this cryosphere “acts on a larger scale: if humanity were capable of eliminating all greenhouse gas emissions at once, global warming would continue for another one or two years. centuries, and this by the inertia of the cryosphere and the hydrosphere.

The Arctic and the cold in summer

On September 11, the extent of sea ice in the Arctic reached its annual minimum, as reported a few days ago by the US Snow and Ice Center (NSIDC). The 4.6 million km2 measured by satellite is the seventh worst record since records began.

This confirms that a less and less frozen and increasingly ice-free Arctic is now the norm, as the 18 records for minimum ice extent at the North Pole correspond to the last 18 calendar years – the worst course has been set in 2012.

And not only is the frozen ocean smaller, it’s also thinner. The volume of ice on the waters in October 2024 is at its smallest record for at least the last five years: it is around 5,000 km3 while the average for this time of year between 2004 and 2013 was around 9,000 km3, according to measurements from the Danish Arctic Ice Monitoring Service, Polar Portal.

The Arctic ice is thinning with more and more areas only one or two meters thick while the normal is between two and three meters, specifies the NSIDC. One reason for this thinning is that as more of the area melts (which is why the maxima decrease), new ice must form from scratch instead of growing from scratch. above the previous layers of ice. In turn, this thinner ice melts more easily in spring and summer than that accumulated over several seasons, which translates into the loss of frozen seas.

Arctic ice – and its loss – may be less vivid or colorful than a forced shift in boundaries, but it is crucial, as all scientists warn. Meteorologist Fuentes López has no doubt: “Losing him is very important,” he sums up for elDiario.es. “Not only because it reflects solar radiation, but also because of its insulating power.”

In fact, what happens in the Arctic does not stay there, but has a global influence on the planet’s climate. For example, accelerated warming of the Arctic weakens the polar jet winds that trap cold air in the Far North, causing colder masses to descend southward and warmer masses to rise.

This is what happened last June, when temperatures in Spain were unusually low, as described by CSIC scientists Santiago Giralt and Sergi Pla. The researchers told elDiario.es that a colder summer month not only does not negate climate change “but quite the contrary: it is a consequence of this change.” The climate is becoming more and more “extreme”, summarize both, who talk about their experiences during scientific campaigns in Greenland: “The melting ice is scandalous. »

Without snow in the stations (nor with cannons)

Even though the cold crisis facing the planet may go unnoticed, there is a moment every year when it manifests itself and attracts attention: the moment when thousands of people look at their skis and equipment waiting in the closet to come out and slide on a white track. But these tracks are already – and will become even more so – increasingly brown and unusable.

“There is less and less snow and there will be less,” summarizes the meteorologist. “And this becomes more evident at stations located at lower altitudes,” he adds. All those who settled in the central and Iberian systems or in the Cantabrian mountain range, for example. “The decline is evident and continued until the end of the century,” modeled Flores, who reviewed the weather indicators of Spanish ski resorts to conclude, with the data in hand, that “they are threatened by global warming. “The figures and trends revealed by the Copernicus program paint a difficult picture of the winter future. »

And to the obvious problem that there is less snow from the sky, there is another parameter: there are fewer days with temperatures below -2ºC, the threshold for making and maintaining artificial snow using cannons. “The number of hours with this level of cold is shorter, so the period for the station to be operational is also shorter,” explains Fuentes. For example, at Alto Campoo station, these hours are on track to decrease by almost half (from over 500 to around 300), according to climate models. The same thing happens in Navacerada and Valdelinares, all below 2,000 meters above sea level, according to the work of Fuentes, who summarizes for elDiario.es: “Canyons without adequate temperatures can end up being toast to the sun.”

The difficulties are already observed these winters, but this study which looked at where we are going shows the reduction in seasonal days between 9% and 74%, going through drops of 50%, 23%, 19%, in those lower. facilities.

Avalanches in the cracking mountains

And as if that were not enough, the same mountains, where it snows less, are melting and cracking. As the terrain on mountain slopes warms, avalanches occur: Rising temperatures increase rockfall by melting the layer of terrain that until now remained frozen, Alpine study reveals Swiss extrapolated to other regions. »

In this case, rising temperatures melt permafrost, this frozen soil, which, when it loses its cohesion, precipitates. The results once again come from the Swiss Alps, but the researchers reproduce the experiment in the Pyrenees and everything suggests that the same thing is happening in the Spanish mountain range: the mountains are already more unstable.

“We can close our eyes, but reality is stubborn. It’s not something that comes from the future, it’s something that’s happening in the present,” concludes Benito Fuentes López. “There will be good years, which from a cold point of view means with a lot of snow, but in the historical series I will verify that there are more bad years than good years. And on the next check the same thing will happen. And so gradually.