A remnant of the last Ice Age, the Aletsch glacier has its rivers retreated 3.4 kilometers (2.1 miles)! And this is since peaking at a length of 23 kilometers (14 miles) in 1860! This alarming shrinking of the alpine glacier is estimated by Hanspeter Holzhauser, a geographer at the University of Zurich.
It is just over the past 56 years, about 1.4 kilometers (a little under a mile) of the Aletsch glacier region has shrunk. Where the tongue of ice mass used to be, it is now a bare expanse of jumbled rocks and boulders stretches can be seen.
Holzhauser fears and predicts that the glacier will shrink more, never mind even if temperatures stay at current levels! It is because the warming of the last few decades has yet to take full effect.
Via: Environmental News Network