ST. PETERSBURG, February 16. /TASS/. Scientists of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) forecast that within 30 years will melt away the Aldegonda Glacier on Spitsbergen, which specialists use to determine climatic processes on the planet, the institute's press service said.
"Over recent five years, the Aldegonda Glacier on the Spitsbergen archipelago has lost ten meters of its water equivalent off the surface, and its average thickness has shrunk to 39 meters. The dramatic loss of the glacier's mass is associated with air temperature's increase: several recent years were the warmest years in the history of Arctic observations, and thus the glacier has reached a record negative mass balance. If the current dynamics of weight loss continues, it may disappear completely in 30 years," the press service said.
The Aldegonda Glacier has lost about 20% of its mass, scientists say.
"In the recent decade, this glacier has been losing mass at an unprecedented rate, which is not surprising. That period is known for the warmest years in the history of climate observations in the Arctic, and the Aldegonda Glacier's mass balance, like that of the entire Spitsbergen glaciation, has become maximum negative," the press service quoted the institute's researcher Anton Terekhov as saying.
According to him, the Aldegonda Glacier "acts as an indicator of large-scale climatic processes on the planet." By observing it, scientists detect climatic fluctuations of the entire Northern Hemisphere.
For the first time since the Mammoth Era
According to institute, in 2024, global warming for the first time exceeded the critical threshold of 1.5°C against pre-industrial levels, resulting in the lowest annual balance registered over the glacier monitoring program on the Spitsbergen archipelago. This was facilitated by long-term heat waves that swept North America, the entire European subcontinent, including the Central and Northwestern parts of Russia. Such intense melting has not been observed since at least 1911, when the Little Ice Age ended in the region.
"Glaciers have been losing their mass at an unprecedented rate. Over the recent decade, many of them have been melting with the intensity comparable to remaining ice reserves. According to climatic reconstructions, there has not been such a reduction in glaciers on Spitsbergen over recent 4,000 years, that is when mammoths still lived on the planet," the scientist said in conclusion.