New record for freezing temperatures, reaching 5,328 metres.At the top of the Marmolada, 14 degrees were recorded

Claudio Tei, Cnr meteorologist:«All the Alpine glaciers, at all altitudes, are above freezing and the situation is quite critical»

While the Centre-North is grappling with yet another one heat wave, in the night between Sunday 20th and Monday 21st August a new Italian record was recorded for the freezing level, i.e. the data that indicates the altitude at which the temperature is zero degrees Celsius.At the radio sounding station of Novara Cameri, he reports ilMeteo.it, the zero temperature reached 5,328 meters, the highest value ever recorded.«All the Alpine glaciers, at all altitudes, are above zero and the situation is quite critical», commented Claudio Tei, researcher and meteorologist at the Cnr yesterday.«The hottest days that the models predict are Monday 21st and Tuesday 22nd August with peaks of 38 degrees in some cities and even 10 degrees above seasonal values ​​in the western Alps».Among the mountains that record the most impressive data is once again the Marmolada, where yesterday afternoon in Punta Penia (3,343 meters above sea level) the thermometer reached 14 degrees.And the "Queen of the Dolomites" glacier is among those specially observed regarding the effects of climate change on the mountains.According to Legambiente, in the last century the Marmolada glacier has lost more than 70% by surface and more than 90% by volume.

The ever greener peaks

To notice the increasingly higher temperatures recorded in the mountains, just pay attention to another detail:the presence of trees.According to a study by the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen (China), between 2000 and 2010 trees began to grow at increasingly higher altitudes.The remote sensing technology used by the Chinese university estimates that, between 2000 and 2010, 70% of the mountain tree cover moved higher at a speed of about 1.2 meters per year.The study focused on nearly one million square kilometers of terrain spread across 243 mountainous regions around the world.These are mountains far from any type of human activity, where the movement of the boundary line that separates the trees from the rock face can only be explained by the increase in temperatures.According to the Guardian, the effects of this phenomenon are still unclear.On the one hand, expanding tree cover at higher altitudes certainly contributes to removing more CO2 from the atmosphere.At the same time, it reduces the area of ​​the tundra, with consequences for the survival of some alpine species and for the water supply of some people.

Photo credits:ANSA/ MeteoTriVeneto | The Marmolada glacier, 20 August 2023