The surface and volume of Italy's most famous glacier, the Marmolada, continue to shrink at an alarming rate. This is supported by annual measurements taken by geographers and glaciologists from the University of Padua, which paint an increasingly bleak picture of the health of the Dolomites' most important glacier. This year, about twenty expert hikers from Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, and Lombardy were able to closely follow the measurements thanks to the participatory glaciological campaign organized by the Museum of Geography of the University of Padua. "In addition to the generalized thinning of the fronts, we have recorded significant retreats, which at the point of greatest regression are close to 90 meters on an annual basis, with an average retreat in the eight frontal signals of about 20 meters per year," says Mauro Varotto, Glacier's head of frontal measurements. "This melting trend will soon cause the total area of the main glacier, calculated by my colleague Francesco Ferrarese in 2022 at 112 hectares, to fall below the square kilometer: a statistically significant threshold, half of the surface present in 2000 and less than a quarter compared to 1900."