Marmolada Glacier in Italy Predicted to Disappear Within 16 Years

13th September 2024

Last modified on September 14th, 2024

The Marmolada is the highest peak in Italy’s northeastern mountain range and is known as the ‘Queen of the Dolomites’.

The glacier has seen 70 hectares of its surface disappear in the last five years – the equivalent of 98 football fields.

Measurements from 136 years ago show it extended for about 500 hectares and was as big as 700 football fields.

The Marmolada glacier is losing 7cm – 10cm of thickness per day, according to scientists, and risks melting away completely by 2040.

Since the beginning of scientific measurements in 1888 it has retreated by 1,200m.

“The Marmolada glacier is dying and covering it with sheets is therapeutic obstinacy with the sole aim of protecting the ski slopes,” a spokesperson for Legambiente, the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps, Cipra, and the Italian Glacier Committee.

It added that the ice cap was now in an “irreversible coma”.

• Threat to Italian glaciers increases
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Marmolada ice collapse. Image c/o Alpine rescue services.

Another of Italy’s most well-known glaciers, Dosdè, is retreating.