A sample of 224 meters of ice extracted from the Adamello glacier is under observation in the EuroCold laboratories, where the Milano Bicocca University guarantees a constant temperature of minus 50 degrees.
From this operation, the first ever carried out in the entire Alpine arc, the experts of the ClimAda project expect indications to understand the climate of the last thousand years and try to predict what tomorrow will be like. It is unlikely that it will be in the next thousand since the ice is destined to melt sooner.
Glaciers are sentinels of anthropic action, explains Mita Lapi, head of research, development and sustainability of the Lombardy Foundation for the Environment, leader of the ClimAda project, supported by the Cariplo Foundation with 190 thousand euros: “Let’s see, for example, the alterations due to dust that they were deposited in the ice, because this is an area where a lot of gunfire was fired during the First World War ». But the information also goes as far as unraveling phases of rapid climate change such as the Little Ice Age.
On the occasion of the international day for the reduction of natural disasters, which is celebrated on 13 October, Antonio Ballarin Denti, president of the scientific committee of the Lombardy Foundation for the Environment, anticipated some evidence of the ClimAda project, from which one immediately deduces a data in fact: the glaciers, the very ones that were once defined as “eternal”, are now in check due to the rising temperature of the atmosphere.
“An increase of 1-2 degrees compared to a few decades ago may seem small – comments Professor Ballarin Denti -, but when a glacier has always lived at -1 ° C and is then at + 1 ° C, it means that the its mass of ice becomes water, with the aggravating circumstance that it is an irreversible process, that is, with no return ».