A picture taken on June 26, 2021, from Thyon shows a view of the 4358 meters high Dent Blanche mountain (L) next to the 4478 meters high Matterhorn mountain in the Swiss Alps. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP)
Geneva, Switzerland — Climate change has dramatically altered the Swiss Alp landscape – at a quicker pace than expected – as melting glaciers have created more than 1,000 new lakes across the mountains, a study published Monday showed.
The inventory of Swiss Glacial lakes showed that almost 1,200 new lakes have formed in formerly glaciated regions of the Swiss Alps since the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850.
Around 1,000 of them still exist today, according to the study published by the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag).
That is far more than the few hundreds the researchers had expected to find at the beginning of the project.
TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY
“We were surprised by the sheer numbers,” Daniel Odermatt, head of the Eawag Remote Sensing Group that carried out the study, said in a statement.
He said the “marked acceleration in formation” was also surprising, pointing out that “180 have been added in the last decade alone”.
