Friday, March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 18, 1445 H
clear sky
weather
OMAN
25°C / 25°C
EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Pyrenees glaciers could disappear within 30 years

1421674-(1)
1421674-(1)
minus
plus

TOULOUSE: Glaciers nestled in the lofty crags of the Pyrenees mountains separating France and Spain could disappear within 30 years as temperatures rise, upending ecosystems while putting local economies at risk, scientists say.


“We can’t set a precise date but the Pyrenees glaciers are doomed,” Pierre Rene, a glaciologist with the region’s Moraine glacier study association, said. He estimates the end will come by 2050, based on the group’s measurements of nine of the 15 glaciers on the French side over the past 18 years.


The United Nations has said the past decade has been the hottest on record and warned that persistent greenhouse gas emissions were expected to push average global temperatures even higher, leading to retreating ice cover, rising sea levels and increasingly extreme weather.


It also confirmed that 2019 was the second hottest year on record, after 2016. Surveys, core samples and GPS tracking of the Pyrenees glaciers all point to the same conclusions already noted at glaciers in the Alps and elsewhere: Warmer and drier winters appear to be inexorably shrinking and thinning the ice fields.


The total surface area of the nine glaciers tracked by Moraine now stands at 79 hectares compared with 140 hectares just 17 years ago, Rene said. That is just a small fraction of the 450 hectares they covered in the middle of the 19th century — and the pace of decline is accelerating.


— AFP


SHARE ARTICLE
arrow up
home icon