LJUBLJANA: Drop by drop, Slovenia is losing its ice.
Faced with rising temperatures and declining snow in winter, the Alpine nation has seen one of its two glaciers melt away, and the remaining one shrinking irreversibly.
Slovenians know that they are no exception to the global trend of warming that scientists say partly is the result of human-induced climate change.
A record hot and dry summer in Europe this year further aggravated the situation — the glacier on Mount Triglav, Slovenia’s highest peak, completely melted away by the end of the summer, while the remaining one is still holding on. It is called Skuta and is located in the Kamnik-Savinje Alps to the north.
Andrej Slak, a mountain guide, has been in the mountains for the past 35 years. The change, he said, has been especially noticeable over the past decade or so.
“We are standing here by the last remaining glacier in Slovenia,” Slak showed an Associated Press reporter after the two climbed a rocky terrain to reach the remains of Skuta. “Just look at what is left of it — barely anything more than a small patch covered in grit and debris. The change is striking.”
What remains is a patch of ice on the surface of the mountainside, and the rest buried under stones, with a narrow opening leading into a crevasse.
Slak said the glaciers have served as vital water reservoirs for the surrounding valleys over centuries. Shepherds once used icy hollows like this to store and preserve meat but such ice pockets can no longer be found, he explained.
In the capital Ljubljana, Anton Melik Geographical Institute at the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts has kept the monitoring records for both glaciers for the past 80 years.
Geographer Miha Pavsek said Skuta initially had about 2.5 to 3 hectares (6.1-7.4 acres) of ice underneath. Now there are 1.5 hectares (3.7 acres) and the ice has thinned from dozens of meters (feet) to just a few meters thick.
The now-gone Triglav Glacier had covered a little more than 14 hectares (34.5 acres) 80 years ago. Five or 10 years ago, it was down to between half a hectare and one hectare (2.4 acres). It then gradually disappeared.
The tipping point, Pavsek said, came from a combination of two factors: very little snow, meaning a very low maximum seasonal snow depth, followed by a very warm summer. These two factors, he said, “coincided very well this year.”
On Skuta, a marker painted on a rock shows how far the glacier reached in 1994. The ice has pulled back from it since then, and Pavsek predicted that Skuta is on the same trajectory as the lost Triglav Glacier.
Most of the remaining ice surface on Skuta is covered in gravel, which gives it some protection from the sun, Pavsek said. Still, though 80 to 90 percent of the ice was covered in gravel a week ago, the glacier was still melting — water could be seen dripping in a cave below.
The effects of the glacier melting are felt far beyond the mountains.
In Slovenia, meltwater from glaciers and the snow normally feeds major rivers, including the Drava in Croatia and the Mura, which originates in Austria. Experts predict that all glaciers below 3,500 meters altitude in Austria are also expected to disappear by 2050, which would further affect the two rivers, Pavsek explained.
“These rivers feed the groundwater, where we have wells and pumps for drinking water,” he said.
Already, mountain huts at high altitudes in the Slovenian Alps have faced water shortages during the past two summers and are asking visitors to economize.
Known as a nature-loving country, Slovenia has mountain climbing and hiking as part of the country’s tradition. Locals have followed closely the change as it unfolded before them.
Tanja Plavec, from Ljubljana, is worried that the entire world is yet to face the consequences.
“Glaciers serve as a vital reserve of the Earth’s water. As they disappear, that reserve disappears with them,” she said. “Furthermore, glaciers host a unique ecosystem that also vanishes as the perennial ice disappears.”