About a month ago I wrote about a mountain pass at the Glacier 3000 ski area that was set to be ice free for the first time since the Roman era. That pass, located between the Scex Rouge and the Zalfleuron glaciers, now features that ice free rocky path.
According to Reuters, the hot summer that’s been plaguing Europe caused an ice melt three times higher than the 10-year average for that region. As a result, the glaciers, which sit at ~9,186 feet (2,800 meters), were unable to continue to completely hold ice across the pass.
“About 10 years ago I measured 15 metres (50 feet) of ice here so all that ice has melted in the meantime. What we saw this year and this summer is just extraordinary and it’s really beyond everything we have ever measured so far.” – Mauro Fischer, glaciologist at the University of Bern’s Institute of Geography, according to Reuters
There’s a chance you’re reading this and thinking, “whatever, hot summers happen, that’s just how the world works,” but, man, I really hope that’s not the case. If you’re watching everything that’s going on in this world and still don’t care about climate change, or even don’t believe in climate change, I really don’t know what to say to you. This stuff is scary, and a lot of us are going to have to live through the much more dire consequences than 2000 year old mountain paths completely melting.
Image Credit: Reuters on YouTube