Climate Change I: Europe's Shrinking Alpine Glaciers

The very end of the Fiescher Glacier, the Alps' 3rd longest. It used to fill this valley up to the level of clearly etched valley walls to where (darker) vegetation takes over until the 1850's, when the glaciers were actually advancing. Now the valley is filled with end moraine, or the mix of rubble and rapidly melting old ice. The sheer, black rock-liked faces free of rubble is the glacial ice just before it melts and washes down the valley to the sea. Between 1850 and 2000, Swiss...
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The very end of the Fiescher Glacier, the Alps' 3rd longest. It used to fill this valley up to the level of clearly etched valley walls to where (darker) vegetation takes over until the 1850's, when the glaciers were actually advancing. Now the valley is filled with end moraine, or the mix of rubble and rapidly melting old ice. The sheer, black rock-liked faces free of rubble is the glacial ice just before it melts and washes down the valley to the sea. Between 1850 and 2000, Swiss glaciers have lost 40% of their surface area and 2/3 of their ice mass. There are 125 glaciers in the Aletsch and Fiescher Glacier area smaller than 1 square kilometer that will disappear altogether by 2050, though a greatly dimished Fiescher Glacier will exist for several more decades. By the end of the 21st century, at a realistic average figure for projected temperature rise of 3 degrees C (5.4 F), 80% of today's glaciated land will disappear. Burghutte, Switzerland.
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