Höfn in south of Iceland with the mountains covered with snow. Worth mentioning that this image was taken in Winter

French Alps close to Mont Blanc from the air.

The Görner Glacier is a retreating glacier and in quite a dramatic way. Nowadays, Gorner Glacier retreats about 30 metres every year, but with a record loss of 290 metres in 2008. Since its last major expansion. A group of scientists in Switzerland has predicted that Alpine glaciers like this one could be reduced to a few patches of ice by 2100 due to global warming. The Alps would lose about 50% of their present glacier volume by 2050 in all scenarios. A reason why volume loss is mostly independent of emissions until 2050 is that increases in mean global temperature with increasing greenhouse gases only become more pronounced in the second half of the century.

The Alps close to Roterboden

The Alps close to Roterboden

Sólheimajökull outlet glacier
One of the outlet glaciers of Mýrdalsjökull glacier in South Ice- land is retreating at a rapid pace, causing scientists and tour guides to fear the glacier will disappear in the near future. “Sol- heimajokull glacier is an approximately 11km long and 200m - 300m thick and 46 sqkm outlet glacier, which advances from Myrdalsjokull glacier. Sólheimajökull retreated by 973 meters (0.6 miles) from 2000-2015. In the years 2017 - 2018 the glacier retreated 100m. If the climate continues to warm, there is a possibility that the glaciers will have virtually disappeared in 100 to 200 years. “It is among the highest losses on the Earth,” says pioneering glaciologist” Helgi Bjornsson.

Sólheimajökull retreated by 973 meters (0.6 miles) from 2000-2015. In the years 2017 - 2018 the glacier retreated 100m. If the climate continues to warm, there is a possibility that the glaciers will have virtually disappeared in 100 to 200 years. “It is among the highest losses on the Earth,” says pioneering glaciologist” Helgi Bjornsson. Iceland’s Sólheimajökull glacier, which covers the active volcano, Katla, is releasing up to 41 tons of methane every day through its meltwater during the summer months equal to the methane produced by more than 136,000 belching cows. “This is a huge amount of methane lost from the glacial melt water stream into the atmosphere,” Peter Wynn, a glacial biogeo- chemist at Lancaster University and co-author of the study, said in a statement. “It greatly exceeds average methane loss from non-glacial rivers to the atmosphere reported in the scientific literature. It rivals some of the world’s most methane-produc- ing wetlands and represents more than twenty times the known methane emissions of all Europe’s other volcanoes put together.”

Zermatt

Even if we manage to stop the climate from warming any further, keeping it at the level of the past 10 years, glaciers would still lose about 40% of their present-day volume by 2050 because of this “glacier response time,” says Zekollari. “Glaciers in the European Alps and their recent evolution are some of the clearest indicators of the ongoing changes in cli- mate,” says ETH Zurich senior co-author Daniel Farinotti. “The future of these glaciers in indeed at risk, but there is still a possibility to limit their future losses.”

Sierra Nevada



Sierra Nevada mountain with Granada on the Foreground. High temperatures derived from climatic change are threatening vegetation on Sierra Nevada, in particular its endemic flora, according to the yearly Environment report published by the Junta de Andalucía

Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon



A visual representation of climate change, you can observe the dynamic melting of the Breiðamerkurjökull and Vatnajökull glaciers that flows into this lagoon. The lagoon didn't even exist 60 years ago. Vatnajökull, Europe’s largest ice cap and the source of Breiðamerkurjökull, is thinning rapidly due to rising global temperatures and could be completely gone in 100 years, scientists say. Other glaciers may vanish much earlier.