Italy’s Ventina glacier, one of the biggest in Italy’s northern Lombardy region, has melted so much due to climate change that geologists can no longer measure it the way they have for the past 130 years.

After this year’s hot summer, geologists discovered that the simple stakes they had used as benchmarks to measure the glacier’s retraction each year are now buried under rockslides, snowmelt and debris.

This had made the entire terrain too unsteady for future in-person monitoring visits.

The Lombardy Glaciological Service will now use drone imagery and remote sensing to keep track of ongoing shrinkage.

The Ventina glacier has already lost 1.7 kilometres (just over a mile) in length since the first measuring benchmarks were positioned at the front of the glacier in 1895, geologists said on Monday.

The melting has accelerated in recent years, with the glacier losing 431 meters (yards) in the last 10 years, with nearly half of that since 2021.

It's another example of how accelerating global warming is melting and shrinking Europe’s glaciers, causing a host of environmental and other impacts.

“If we continue to take no action to limit greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere and thus limit global warming, by the end of the century, 90% of the volume of glaciers in Lombardy and the Alps in general is destined to disappear,” said Andrea Toffaletti, of the Lombardy Glaciology Service.

Italy’s glaciers, which are found throughout the Alps and Dolomites in the north and along the Appenines running the length of the peninsula, have been receding for years, thanks to inadequate snowfalls in the winter and record-setting hot summers.

Glaciers always melt some in summer, with the runoff fuelling mountain streams and rivers.

But the hot summers mean less residual snow from the winter will remain on the winter snowpack's surface at the end of the summer.

According to the Lombardy service, the Alps represent a climate hotspot, recording double the global average of temperature increases since pre-industrial times, resulting in the loss of over 64% of the volume of Alpine glaciers.

AP video by Silvia Stellacci