MRI Newsletter 3: Understanding Climate Change in Mountains

Abstract

First results from field measurements leave no doubt; the extreme warm and dry weather conditions in the summer of 2003 had a profound impact on Alpine glaciers. According to data from global glacier monitoring programs, the thickness of European Alpine glaciers decreased roughly 5 times more than the average loss per year recorded during the already exceptionally warm period 1980–2000. This makes the loss of one single year about an order of magnitude higher than the reconstructed average loss per year during the 20th century (Prof. Wilfried Haeberli, personal communication 2004). These results demonstrate in an impressive but disturbing way how the impacts of climate variability or climate change are increasingly becoming perceptible. Such changes can only be documented and analyzed if high-elevation measurement sites are available.