With the climate catastrophe and global warming worsening, 2022 was a disastrous year for Alpine glaciers. This is a picture of the glacial hemorrhage that the entire Alpine arc is experiencing because of a climate crisis that is getting worse and worse at an unstoppable rate. Glaciers are breaking up into smaller pieces and moving to higher altitudes, where unstable events like landslides, debris flows, and rock and ice avalanches happen more often. Last year, the white giants had to deal with a very hot summer with intense heat waves, record temperatures for Northern Italy, and a severe drought. Consider that at the end of July, Meteo Suisse reported the thermal zero in the Swiss Alps at 5,184 meters, which is quite high given that the thermal zero should be around 3500 meters in August. And this came after a snow-less winter, which had a devastating effect on communities and the economy: multiple slopes were closed, the fall descents of the Alpine Ski World Cup on the glaciers between Zermatt and Cervinia were canceled for the first time, and mountain guides were forced to cancel accompaniments on Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa owing to the increasing risk of the paths. On the eve of International Mountain Day, this is the complaint of LEGAMBIENTE and the Italian Glaciological Committee.
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