Mont Blanc, Tallest Mountain in the Alps, Shrinks 2.2 Meters

Mont Blanc has shrunk 2.22 meters (approximately 7.3 feet) since 2021, leaving it at its lowest height in the 22 years since recordings began in 2001. Mont Blanc is famous for being the tallest mountain in the Alps and of Western Europe, but it has now declined to a height of 4,805.59 meters (15,766 feet).

The last recorded height for the mountain was 4,807.81 meters in 2021, about one meter shorter than the 2017 recorded height, The Guardian reported.

A group of 20 surveyors divided into eight groups climbed Mont Blanc last month, using GPS and drones to determine the mountain’s height, as reported by BBC. This method tracks the mountain height to the nearest centimeter. According to experts, Mont Blanc has been declining by about 13 centimeters per year.

But those on the research team noted that they need many more years of measurements to determine any trends.

“Even if we see that there is a slight downward trend – around 15 to 20 cm since 2001 — of this snowy summit of Mont Blanc, climatologists and glaciologists tell us that it takes approximately 50 years of measurement to be able to draw conclusions on possible global warming at this altitude of 4,800 meters,” said surveyor Denis Borrel, as reported by The Guardian.

Borrel told French television network TF1 that Mont Blanc had lost about 3,500 cubic meters of snow and ice in the past two years.

The ice melt, plus high temperatures and lack of precipitation, could be contributing to the shorter height. Surveyors also say the winds could play a part in whether the height increases or decreases.

“Normally, Mont Blanc gains one meter from June to September, but that did not happen this summer because several days of positive temperatures, even a record of 10 degrees Celsius,” Farouk Kadded of Leica Geosystems told Reuters.

But the team of surveyors measuring Mont Blanc’s height said they will not be interpreting why the mountain is seeing a dip in height, instead leaving that to climate scientists.

One glaciologist, Luc Moreau, told The Guardian that the lower recording this year was “not representative of global climate warming, because the climatic conditions at the summit of Mont Blanc are rather polar,” instead saying, “It is mainly the wind and the snow which will influence the altitude of the summit. The wind will remove the snow or not.”

Jean des Garets, the chief geometer in Haute-Savoie and leader of the team of surveyors, told the BBC, “The summit is constantly changing in altitude and position, with changes of up to five meters. Mont Blanc could well be much taller in two years.”