Pasterze glacier faces unprecedented melt, ORF reports

The Pasterze glacier at the Großglockner is losing ice at an unprecedented rate, with melting continuing around the clock even at the highest elevations, Austrian broadcaster ORF reported on Friday.

New aerial photographs taken from about 4,500 metres show a hollow ice formation at a critical break point of the glacier. A new waterfall is flowing beneath it, while part of the formation has already broken away.

Glaciologist Andrea Fischer of the Austrian Academy of Sciences said the glaciers of the Hohe Tauern mountain range were in a condition that had never previously been documented. “All reserves have now been used up,” she said, adding that two or three more months of melting could lie ahead in the worst case.

The last connection between the lower part of the Pasterze and its upper accumulation area on the Oberer Pasterzenboden is now only about the size of a high-rise building. A cavity containing a lake and large amounts of meltwater may lie beneath a flatter section of the glacier, Fischer said.

The upper part of the Pasterzenboden has been separated from the glacier floor in the centre of the photographs for years by a rock wall. In earlier decades, old snow from the winter still covered and protected the area in August, often until the end of September. This year, exposed rock islands are appearing in the ice.

The photographs were taken near Heiligenblut, directly on the border with Salzburg and from outside the national park. ORF photographer Gerald Lehner took the latest images this week. Mountain and ski guide and professional photographer Daniel Breuer photographed the break point on July 31 during a high-altitude tour in the Großglockner area.

The record melting years of 2003 and 2022 had previously marked the most severe episodes, according to the report. The current conditions have taken the glacier’s surface, with bare mountains around it, to a level Fischer described as resembling vast glaciated landscapes in Pakistan’s Karakoram.