Alpine glaciers 25% smaller

AS FRANCE basked after its warmest November and driest autumn since the beginning of the last century scientists say glaciers are in retreat across the French Alps.

A research paper at the American Geophysical Union says that the approximately 600 glaciers in the Mont Blanc, Ecrins, Belledonne, Vanoise, Ubaye and Grande Rousse Arves massifs have been reduced in total size by a quarter.

The World Glacier Inventory showed four decades ago that the alpine glaciers covered 375 sq km but later surveys from 1985-6 showed it had dropped to 340sq.km and latest satellite images and ground surveys produced by Marie Gardent and researchers at the University of Savoie, have shown this has reduced to 275sq.km.

France’s largest glacier, the Mer de Glace which covers 1,000m down the slopes of Mont-Blanc, is also smaller; reduced in size from 31.5sq.km in the late 1960s to just over 30sq.km today.

Glaciers have all but disappeared in the Belledonne massif in Isère and the Ecrins massif in Hautes-Alpes is following the trend of the southern icefields being hardest hit by the retreat. The Ecrins rate of decline is about three times that of Mont-Blanc farther north.