Melted quickly

Glaciers in the Hohe Tauern suffered greatly in 2023

The Pasterze near the Großglockner, Austria's largest glacier, in 2020. It has continued to melt since then.

(Bild: OeAV Gletschermessdienst Archiv)

The high temperatures in 2023 had a severe impact on the glaciers of the Hohe Tauern. As a measurement shows, the ice on the three glaciers thinned by an average of 1.9 meters. The summer and fall of 2023 in particular were simply too warm for the ice giants.

The glaciers in the Hohe Tauern, which are regularly measured by Geosphere Austria, melted considerably in the past glacier year (fall 2022 to fall 2023). This is shown by the evaluation of the autumn measurements on Kleinfleißkees, Goldbergkees and Pasterze.

Ice 1.9 meters thinner
"The fresh snow in spring 2023 gave the glaciers a good start, but this was followed by one of the warmest summers and one of the warmest autumns in recorded history," says glaciologist Anton Neureiter from Geosphere Austria. "In 2023, the glaciers in the Hohe Sonnblick area - Kleinfleißkees and Goldbergkees - had the second-highest melt rate since measurements began. The ice thickness of these glaciers melted by an average of 1.9 meters last year."

In total, around 168 million cubic meters of ice have melted from the Pasterzen Tongue since 2012. This corresponds to an ice cube with a side length of 552 meters.

Glaziologe Anton Neureiter

The Pasterze, Austria's largest glacier, is also melting rapidly, especially in the area of the tongue, the lower part of the glacier. "Since 2012, the Pasterze glacier tongue has lost up to 120 meters of ice thickness," says Neureiter, "in total, around 168 million cubic meters of ice have melted from the Pasterze tongue since 2012. That corresponds to an ice cube with a side length of 552 meters."

Part of an international program
The ongoing glacier and snow cover monitoring on the Sonnblick and Pasterze glaciers is part of the Global Cryosphere Watch program of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and is funded by the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK).