34901407 - None : Design Pics

The beautiful, spectacular and unique ice caves of the European Alps are some of the best in the world, and for thousands of years they have sat silently beneath the rocky mountainous landscape, coolly archiving information about changes to the environment above. These awe-inspiring, little-seen landscapes have historically been farmed for ice, and in the last century they have provided a source of tourism. Today though, they are threatened by warming temperatures, which are rising twice as fast in the Alps as compared to the global average. Over the last few decades, the ice has already declined rapidly, and this will continue into the future. The public are used to hearing about the loss of glaciers, ice sheets, permafrost and sea ice, but ice caves are also an important part of the cryosphere that will soon be a distant memory. Recently, they have also become an important avenue for scientific research, but the clock is ticking also for the scientists who are working to understand them. The University of Innsbruck, Austria is one of the main institutions for carrying out scientific research to better understand the past, current and future state of the European ice caves. Young scientists involved in this project are Tanguy Racine (https://quaternary.uibk.ac.at/People/Staff/Tanguy.aspx). Tanguy works on the project “Ice Cave-A Threatened Climate Archive in the Alps” (https://www.uibk.ac.at/acinn/research/atmospheric-dynamics/projects/ice-in-caves.html.en). Tanguy’s work focusses on understanding the analysis and interpretation of the climate record that the ice forms. For him and his colleagues, their scientific field is in its infancy, but time is running out too as the environment that they are trying to understand is fast disappearing. Why did we cover this story now? The alpine ice caves are rapidly melting as our climate changes and average global temperatures are rising. Here, you see a beautiful artistic lithograph from 1845 showing people exploring Kolowratshöhle, on the Austria/German border taken from the artist: Georg Petzoldt. Some visitors went there to ice-skate. Sadly, melting since the 19th century has changed Kolowratshöhle dramatically. Researchers today stand in the same part of the cave seen in the lithograph. It’s now devoid of ice. This will be the fate of all the other ice caves in the next few decades. In "When the Magic Melts," my most recent article in the October 2022 issue of National Geographic magazine, we document the important contributions of scientists—and tour guides—as they work against the clock in this rapidly disappearing landscape.

License: Royalty Free

Credit: © Robbie Shone / Design Pics

Image Reference: 34901407

Model Release Status: Fully Released

Property Release Status: No Release Required

Web Res

550 x 367

72 DPI

49.00 CAD / 5 Credits

Low Res

1504 x 1003

72 DPI