As you read this, high up on the mountain Triglav, the remains of one of the last glaciers are melting in Slovenia.
The dying Triglav glacier used to cover an area of over 56 football fields, and today - about a century later - only a few smaller, isolated ice areas that resemble pieces of petrified snow in winter are left of the ice giant. In light of the unusually warm weather of the past weeks, even these last traces of what was called the glacier will disappear in the coming days, scientists from the Anton Melik Geographical Institute in Slovenia estimate. Jelena Kozbašić for the Klima 101 portal.
Experts attribute the disappearance to climate change, i.e. its consequences. In addition to the heat, the final collapse of the glacier was caused by unusually low snowfall during the winter and its early melting.
As the highest peak of the Julian Alps, Triglav rises to 2.863 meters above sea level. It is located on the coat of arms and flag of Slovenia and is the only national park in the country. On its northeastern slopes, below the very top, on the Triglav plateau, there used to be the Triglav glacier.
Now they are the so-called glacial remains. But soon those last traces of the existence of the Triglav Glacier will be swept away by the hand of climate change.
History of the Triglav Glacier
This year is only the "nail in the coffin" of the Triglav glacier, which has been eroded by climate change for decades.
Namely, as historical data show, at the end of the 19th century, this glacier occupied an area of over 40 hectares. With the increase in temperature, already in 1946, the Triglav glacier was more than halved, to about 15 hectares. Since then, its surface has been regularly monitored by researchers from the Anton Melik Geographical Institute.
Despite the reduction compared to the end of the 19th century, in the middle of last century, skiers were still able to ski on the glacier on Triglav.
But already in the nineties, only about four decades later, that was no longer possible.
At the beginning of the 21st century, that is, in 2003, the Triglav glacier fell to only 0,7 hectares, which is equivalent to the area of one football field. Although the size varies from season to season, the condition was not great in the following years either - it spread over between one and three hectares.
Then comes the crucial year 2019. The Institute's measurements showed that the Triglav Glacier had shrunk so much that it ceased to be a glacier. In other words, instead of getting new ice from the accumulated snow every winter, it was rapidly disappearing.
"Climate changes in front of our eyes - the retreat of glaciers under Triglav (and Skuta) continues," the Geographical Institute wrote in September of that year. "This glacial carpet is all that remains of the Triglav Glacier."
In the fall of 2019, the area was so small that the experts were unanimous - the glacier has disappeared, Slovenian media wrote at the time.
"The ice mass has decreased so much in the last 150 years, since the end of the Little Ice Age, that it is actually just a patch of ice and cannot possibly be a glacier," assessed physical geographer Uroš Stepinšik.
Photos from the time of King Peter II, when he visited the Triglav plateau as a child in 1937, confirm how dramatic this transformation is. In the background you can see the glacier on Triglav which will no longer exist 90 years after the photo was taken.
Slovenia is the first country to lose all its glaciers
Slovenia has another much smaller glacier, or rather it had one. It is the Skuta glacier which, due to the drastic warming of its surroundings, has lost the characteristics of a glacier such as glacial cracks and has also become just a glacial remnant. In addition, since 1969, the area of Skuta has been below the critical limit of about three hectares.
Water from both former glaciers in Slovenia flows into the Black Sea. That means their melting has contributed to sea level rise, a problem that threatens to wreak havoc on coastal communities around the world. In addition, experts warn that the retreat and disappearance of alpine glaciers in the future may lead to less flow in the Drava and Mura river basins, rivers that are essential for irrigation and water supply in Slovenia.
When some media reported in May 2024 that Venezuela could be the first country in the modern era to lose all its glaciers, researchers drew attention to the fact that Slovenian glaciers had disappeared decades earlier, when the former Triglav Glacier and Skuta became glacial remnants.
On Triglav very soon there will be no more of those glacial remnants either. Warming the planet, in less than a hundred years, humanity wiped away the ice from Triglav, which is estimated to have been deposited there since the end of the Pleistocene, almost 12 thousand years.
Countries that are losing glaciers due to global warming are not competing to be first, second, or third. No one wants that to happen - this is how recognizable landscapes are lost and new dangers are born. That is why the news about the complete melting of the Triglav glacier should be another alarm and an incentive to curb climate change. Otherwise, we could soon be reading about another dying glacier.
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