At the bottom of the Diavolezza cable car in Switzerland, there are already signs of an admission of defeat. Even before visitors ascend to the summit, an exhibition entitled "VR Glacier Experience" invites them to assess the impact of climate change on glaciers, "in order to understand the importance of water and of providing models up to [the year] 2100." An over-equipped South African couple put on the virtual reality headset and found a short animation in which the epithet "inescapable" stood out: "If we do nothing," says one inhabitant of the valley, looking grim, "even a giant like the Morteratsch glacier will disappear in a few decades, no doubt about it."
At an altitude of 3,000 meters, the glacial cirque has already lost much of its splendor. Suspended from the 4,048-meter Piz Bernina massif − the highest point in the eastern Alps, marking the border between Switzerland and Italy − the Morteratsch glacier has a startling palette: It is gray and charcoal everywhere, far from the shimmering cobalt-blue of the ice sheets once associated with this kind of landscape.
"That's where the problem lies. As the ice melts faster and faster, it abrades the rock on which it slides, grinding it down mercilessly under its own weight. The result is an increase in mineral dust," said Hans Oerlemans, a world-renowned Dutch glaciologist and winner in 2022 of the prestigious Balzan Prize for his pioneering work. "A glacier is an autonomous, dynamic system, where thermal differences cause the wind to blow constantly. The wind transports and deposits this dust on the glacier, which becomes darker and darker, reducing the Albedo effect [in which light is reflected]. A white glacier repels the sun's rays, while one that's dark gray absorbs them."
In the three decades since he began setting up measuring stations on glacier systems around the world, the researcher has come to terms with the obvious. "They will disappear, but we can slow down their expected demise." The threat of their disappearance, on a massive scale, was a subject of discussion at the Polar Summit, held in Paris from Wednesday, November 8 to Friday, November 10.
Originally a geophysicist, Oerlemans soon turned to the study of ice, intrigued by the effects of weather on its long-term behavior. As early as 1989, in an article published in the scientific journal Climate Change, this professor of climate dynamics at Utrecht University had predicted rising sea levels under current conditions of global warming, emphasizing the melting of polar ice caps and the thermal expansion of seawater. "It was almost shocking at the time," he said, "but our first projections don't differ that much from what we're seeing today."
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