The tragedy of the Marmolada represents our mandatory awareness

The Marmolada tragedy represents the changing climate. Not only because on the day of the collapse on the highest point of the Dolomites the temperature peak was reached (10.3 degrees Celsius at 3,300 meters above sea level). And not only because glaciers respond to heat even in this way, with sudden collapses, and not only with a slow and gradual melting - which in any case condemns them to the probable disappearance below 3,500 meters across the Alps.

But also because the gradual or sudden disappearance of the Marmolada glacier is a faithful image of how the climate crisis acts. A recent study by the National Research Council (CNR) found that in ten years the glacier has lost a third of its volume. It is a process that accelerates by itself, a tipping point: the melting ice discovers the dark rocks that attract more heat than the frozen white surface. At the same time, melt water accumulates on the bottom of the glacier, flows between ice and rock and lubricates the glacial mass, which thus flows even faster. It takes place in Greenland, on the Himalayas, now in the Alps. The same thing happens, on a larger scale, in various points of the Earth: the climate crisis triggers vicious circles, phenomena that feed on themselves and risk getting out of hand. The slowing of the Gulf Stream, the ‘savannahization’ of the Amazon, the melting of the permafrost: processes that accelerate suddenly and do not stop easily, and which it would be better not to trigger.

As we saw earlier for the Climate Clock, if we stopped CO2 emissions today, temperatures would stop rising in no time. They would remain stable for a few decades, with all the effects we see today, before slowly decreasing thanks to the absorption of carbon by natural ecosystems. But in the meantime, most of the glaciers will be gone, including the Marmolada, in just twenty or maybe thirty years. And with them, the water supply will fail during the summer. 20 percent of the water that reaches the plains every year comes from glaciers, especially in the warmer months. The serac on the Marmolada and the centuries-old drought that envelops Italy (and Europe) are closely linked - basically they are the same news.

After May, even June (+2.88 degrees compared to the 1991-2020 average) remains the second hottest month ever recorded in Europe, second only to 2003 (+3.44 degrees). And on the contrary, too few gigawatts of renewable energy plants have been installed this week.