German Alps: Soon there will only be four glaciers left

Of the five small glaciers in the German Alps so far, only four will soon be left due to global warming. The loss of area of ​​the glaciers has increased rapidly since the turn of the millennium, says the Munich geoscientist Christoph Mayer.

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At the time of the last survey at the end of 2018, the glaciers still measured 44.6 hectares with an ice volume of around 4 million cubic meters. This means that a third of the glaciers have thawed within a decade. In 2010 it was 70 hectares, an estimated 400 years ago.

“The southern Schneeferner is actually no longer there and the remains of the ice will certainly be gone in a few years,” says Mayer, a specialist in earth measurements and glaciology at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

Of the southern Schneeerner lies with its neighbor, the northern Schneeerner, on the Zugspitzplatt not far from the highest German peak in the Wetterstein Mountains near Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The third German glacier is also located in the Wetterstein Mountains Höllentalferner, Numbers four and five are those Blue ice and the Watzmann Glacier in the Berchtesgaden Alps.

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The latter has also long been considered threatened. According to Mayer, the Watzmann glacier “already exists as a mass of ice,” although one could discuss whether it is still a glacier at all. Scientists consider a glacier to be an ice stream that moves like a river, albeit very slowly. “However, the rest of the Watzmann glacier lies in a hollow and therefore has almost no movement,” said Mayer. “On the other hand, snowy winters can keep this glacier ‘alive’ for a long time due to the avalanche load, even if it is only a small piece of ice.”

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Tourists want to see the ice – while it’s still there

Glacier ice is formed by years of compression of the snow in high alpine regions, where the snowfalls of winter do not completely thaw in summer. Fresh snow first becomes compact in the course of a winter and condenses into so-called firn. This is where the term “Ferner” for glaciers, which is customary in some Alpine valleys, comes from.

If more and more snow falls on the old snow of previous years in the following winters, the firn in this nutrient area of ​​a glacier gradually condenses into shiny, hard, bluish or greenish shimmering ice. At the glacier tongue in the lower area – the “Zehrgebiet” – the ice appears bare and melts in the summer without any snow cover.

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If the average temperatures rise, as in the past decades, more ice melts in the consumption area over the course of the year than is newly formed in the nutrient area – the glacier becomes smaller. For the entire Alpine region, scientists recently a dramatic loss of ice stated. According to a study by researchers at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, around a sixth of the ice volume of the Alpine glaciers disappeared between 2000 and 2014 alone. That was more than 22 cubic kilometers of ice. Switzerland was particularly affected, according to the scientists.

At the same time, there is still great tourist interest in the glaciers. The two Zugspitzferner ropeways are most easily accessible for non-mountaineering visitors in Germany with the help of cable cars. (Read here a report on how Germany’s highest mountain has become a playground for tourists, alpinists and recreational climbers.)

Although not classified as a glacier, the “Eiskapelle” on the Königssee, a large firn field of ice and snow at the foot of the Watzmann east face, is also relatively easy to reach thanks to excursion boats. The low-lying ice chapel is fed by the large avalanches that regularly fall over the almost two-kilometer-high wall in winter and spring.

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