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Retreat of "Mer de Glace" Glacier | Fonte de "la Mer de Glace", Chamonix, France

Field observations from July 2005 to April 2014, French-Alps at Chamonix (45.9231° N,

6.8697° E) suggests that the melting of the "Mer de Glace" glacier has been accelerating over the

last few years to the point that it is no longer visible from the valley below. Like other alpine

glaciers, "La Mer de Glace" has seen in the recent decades, impressive variations in melting rates

resulting from increasing global temperatures. In some areas, the glacier lost more than 75m of

ice thickness between 1986 and 2011 averaging to 3.8m per year (Berthier et al. 2004). Some of

the primary objectives of this study incorporate 1) analysis of different terrain (Ice, gravel, grass)

typical of mountain hillslopes impacted by glaciers and their discharge; 2) using remote sensing,

Landsat TM/SPOT time series data to determine the glacier's mass balance variation over the

1975-2015 period; 3) use simple statistics to quantify the hydrological

Article Libération -

| Harold-Alexis |