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Evidence of climate change impact upon glaciers’ recession within the Italian Alps

The case of Lombardy glaciers

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Abstract

We present evidence of climate change impact upon recent changes of glaciers within Lombardy region, in Northern Italy. We illustrate the recent area evolution of a set of 249 glaciers in the area using three surface area records for 1991, 1999 and 2003. The 1999 and 2003 surface area data are processed by combining glacier limits manually digitized upon registered color orthophotos and differential GPS (DGPS) glaciers’ surveys. Glaciers’ area was 117.4 km2 in 1991, 104.7 km2 in 1999, and to 92.4 km2 2003, with a 21% reduction. Glaciers smaller than 1 km2 accounted for 53% of the total loss in area (13.1 km2 during 1991–2003). The area change rate was higher lately, with ca. 11.7 % reduction during 1999–2003. We split Alps and fore Alps of Lombardy into six mountain groups, and we separately investigate relative area variations. We use climate series from local stations within each group to assess climate change during a 30-year window (1976–2005). We focus upon temperature and snow cover depth at thaw, known to impact glaciers’ changes. We compare local year-round temperature anomalies against global ones to evidence enhanced warming within this area, and we investigate the correlation of our target climate variables against NAO. Eventually, we highlight the link between the rate of change of our climate variables to the observed scaling of area loss against glaciers’ size, showing that in rapidly warming areas glaciers’ size affects less relative melting.

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Acknowledgements

This work was performed within the framework of the “Quantification, Evaluation and Description of Lombardy glacier resource” project managed by IREALP (Regional Research Institute for Studying Alpine Ecology and Economy) and in the framework of the project MIUR-COFIN 2008. We wish to thank the ARPA Lombardia (Lombardy Regional Environmental Agency) Geological Monitoring Service for the climate data. We are grateful to Simona Rosazza for her assistance in the GIS processing of 2003 orthophotos. We kindly acknowledge Dr. Gianluca Lentini, at University Milano, for providing reconstructed temperature data for the case study area. Dr. Daniele Bocchiola acknowledges project I-CARE, funded by Politecnico di Milano, 5xmille 2009.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Earth Science Department, Università degli Studi di Milano, Mangiagalli 34, Milan, Italy

    G. Diolaiuti, C. D’agata & C. Smiraglia

  2. Department I.I.A.R., Politecnico di Milano, C.I.M.I. Section, 32 Leonardo da Vinci Sq., 20133, Milan, Italy

    D. Bocchiola

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  1. G. Diolaiuti
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  2. D. Bocchiola
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  4. C. Smiraglia
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Diolaiuti, G., Bocchiola, D., D’agata, C. et al. Evidence of climate change impact upon glaciers’ recession within the Italian Alps. Theor Appl Climatol 109, 429–445 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-012-0589-y

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