October: Monte Perdido Glacier
Monte Perdido, the highest peak in the Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park at 3,355 m asl, rises in the province of Huesca, northern Aragon, Spain. Its exceptional biodiversity drew naturalists and mountaineers throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, captivated by the fact that it forms the tallest limestone massif in Europe.
On its northern flank lies the Monte Perdido Glacier — one of the few remaining glaciers in the Pyrenees and a defining emblem of the national park.
The intense heatwaves of the summers of 2022 and 2023 triggered a marked retreat of the Pyrenean glaciers. Projections suggest that within the next one to two decades, these glaciers may vanish entirely.
Recent measurements from the Monte Perdido Glacier underscore this alarming trajectory: between 2011 and 2023, its ice volume has shrunk by 20%, and the glacier has fractured into two distinct sections.
Additional measurements taken in 2023 revealed that the glacier had receded by an average of 3.8 m, with the eastern sector thinning by as much as 8.1 m. The effects of climate change on the Monte Perdido Glacier are increasingly severe: it has now been officially listed in the Global Glacier Casualty List — an international registry that tracks glaciers deemed irreversibly endangered or already lost due to global warming.
