Aletsch Glacier - Largest In Alps - 80% Gone By 2100 - CSM

[hatrack]

Hohfluh Lookout, Switzerland - Viewed from atop this lookout in the Riederalp area northeast of Geneva, the Aletsch Glacier curves through a 2,000-meter- (1.2-mile) high valley like a massive freeway of packed ice – 23 kilometers (14.2 miles) long, 900 meters deep. The Aletsch is the largest glacier in the Alps. If melted, it would provide a liter of water a day for every inhabitant of Earth for six years.

When Europeans or scientists at the recent global Live Earth program want a quick data point for global warming, the Aletsch provides an example – even if not as dramatic a one as the melt flows in Greenland or Antarctica. "I call it the retreat of the glacier," says Laudo Albrecht, a local director of Pronatura, an environmental group with 100,000 members in Switzerland.

EDIT

In the past 30 years, studies show, the Aletsch has been losing 50 meters of length a year and is thinning. Some years show gains in length, others record losses. But the overall figure is one of shrinkage. Last year, it lost 115 meters – though in 2004 and 2005, the glacier gained about 50 meters per year.

"At this rate, by 2100 about 80 percent of the surface of the glacier will be gone," says Ralph Logon, a Swiss geomorphologist and expert on glaciers.

EDIT

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0717/p07s02-woeu.html

[donsu]

1. sooner then 2100

nt

[Systematic Chaos]

2. Yup, none of these trends are linear. They're geometric.

:(