Sweden’s once-highest peak shrinks further due to glacier melting

Climate researchers have cautioned that melting glacier is causing Sweden’s once-tallest mountain peak to shrink further, shedding light on the extent to which global warming is affecting this part of the world.

The south peak of Sweden’s Kebnekaise was once the tallest mountain in the country – measuring as high as 2,118 metres – till scientists found in August 2018 that it had lost a third of its glacier, and was lower than the northern peak on the same mountain.

In the current research, scientists from Stockholm University have found that this south peak has shrunk further by nearly 2m compared to measurements taken last year.

According to the scientists, the peak is currently at its lowest height since the measurements started in the 1940s, and the melting glaciers offer clues on the extent to which the temperature in Sweden is rising due to global warming.

“The measurement made on August 7, 2020, showed that the south peak’s height was 2,096.5 metres above sea level (and then melted down another half metre on to mid-September). In the past year, the meltdown is thus closer to two metres,” the scientists noted in a statement.

A 2018 study, published in the journal Geografiska Annaler: Series A, Physical Geography, had drawn a correlation between the rate of loss of ice on the Swedish mountains and the extent of warming experienced by the country.

“The height variation is therefore a good symbol of the glaciers’ response to a warming climate in Sweden. When hikers climb the top today, they pass a flat part – a ‘pre-peak’ – which did not exist in the early 2000s,” explains Per Holmlund, professor of glaciology, on site at the Tarfala Research Station in Sweden for further measurements.

“Since 2020, the peak is 2.2 metres lower, but the ‘pre-peak’ has grown by up to 1.2 metres,” Holmlund said in a statement.

Due to rising air temperature and changing wind conditions, the scientists say the peak continues to shrink further with changes in appearance of the drift, affecting where snow accumulates in the mountains each year.

On average, the researchers say the entire drift has decreased in thickness by 0.5m since 2020 – corresponding to about 26,000 tonnes of water.

In last week’s report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), over 230 scientists from 64 countries cautioned that the melting of glaciers around the world has been “unparalleled” for the past 2,000 years, adding that the Earth’s ice cover would continue to decline in size for centuries to come.