Reconstructed glacier area and volume changes in the European Alps since the Little Ice Age

Reinthaler, Johannes; Paul, Frank

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-753-2025

Articles | Volume 19, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-753-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-753-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 2

Research article

|

19 Feb 2025

Research article |

| 19 Feb 2025

Reconstructed glacier area and volume changes in the European Alps since the Little Ice Age

Johannes Reinthaler and Frank Paul

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-753-2025-supplement

Data sets

Reconstructed glacier area and volume changes in the European Alps since the Little Ice Age Johannes Reinthaler and Frank Paul https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14336826

Short summary

Since the end of the Little Ice Age (LIA) around 1850, glaciers in the European Alps have melted considerably. We collected LIA glacier extents, calculated changes using geoinformatics, and found a 57 % decrease in area (4244 km² to 1806 km²) and a 64 % decrease in volume (280 km³ to 100 km³) by 2015. The average glacier surface lowering was 44 m. After 2000, elevation change rates tripled. Over 1938 glaciers melted away completely, impacting entire regions.