Remnants of Slovenia's glacial world

The last two pieces of the ice cap

Only two glaciers or glacial masses remain in Slovenia, the Triglav Glacier and the Skuta Glacier. Due to their small size, neither of them has the characteristics of glaciers anymore, i.e. they no longer move and have no glacial crevasses, so the two are now classified as ice patches or small glaciers. The two glaciers of today are a pale shadow of their former grandeur and living proof of the impact of climate change.

They have been carefully monitored and measured by experts of the Anton Melik Institute of Geography at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts since 1946. This is the oldest ongoing scientific research project in Slovenia.

The Triglav Glacier

The Triglav Glacier lies below Mount Triglav, Slovenia's highest peak. It is the remnant of what was once a much larger glacier. In the middle of the 19th century, it covered more than 40 hectares; at the beginning of the regular measurements, it was just 14 hectares, but by now it has shrunk to less than 0.2 hectare. Today, many visitors to Mount Triglav do not even notice the ice patches.

The Triglav Glacier was originally known as the Green Avalanche or the Green Snow. It is so named because of its green colour of firn ice, a transitional form between snow and glacier ice. Firn turns into glacier ice over the years or, on the south-eastern margin of the Alps, even decades.

The shrinkage of the Triglav Glacier started to intensify in the 1990s. The increasingly rapid thinning of the ice caused the appearance of outcropping rocks in the centre and the glacier split into two parts in 1992. Between 1952 and 2003, the volume of the glacier decreased by about 100 times. Its small size makes it extremely vulnerable to climate change. Researchers reckon that we are probably one of the last generations with the chance to see its remnants in person. If global warming is as intense as it has been so far, the glacier will eventually disappear.

The Skuta Glacier

The Skuta Glacier in the Kamnik-Savinja Alps is the most easterly glacier in the Alps. Although it was once smaller than the Triglav Glacier, it is now the largest glacier in Slovenia. At an altitude of 2100 metres, it is 400 metres lower than the Triglav Glacier, but it has an important advantage - a more favourable, shady position that slows down the glacier's melting.

 Its relatively low altitude makes it particularly vulnerable to climate change. In 1950 it covered an area of 2.8 hectares, today it covers 1.3 hectares.

Even more than the surface, the thickness of the glacier is changing. Experts of the Anton Melik Institute of Geography at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts estimate that it is decreasing at an average rate of 1-1.5 metres per year in different parts of the glacier. 

2025 International Year of Glacier Conservation

Glaciers are natural reservoirs of fresh water, containing almost three-quarters of the Earth's fresh water. They regulate the climate by reflecting sunlight to cool the planet. They are an indicator of climate change. But in recent decades, they have been disappearing before our eyes at an accelerating rate. According to the World Meteorological Organisation, last year, the ice mass declined for the third year in a row in all glacier areas around the world. 

Miha Pavšek from the Anton Melik Institute of Geography at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts estimates that in case, the rest of the summer continues to be excessively hot, the last patches of ice beneath Triglav could disappear already by the end of this summer, and those beneath Skuta in the next few years.

Since the mid-19th century, glaciers around the world have declined significantly. Satellite imagery shows that glaciers have decreased in thickness by an average of about 14 metres since 1976.

This has enormous consequences for people and ecosystems. Some projections suggest that by 2050, areas where 300 million people live today will be, due to the sea level rise -  as a consequence of the water, coming from the thawing glaciers, below the average annual coastal flood level. The melting of permafrost and glaciers in mountains is creating more and more glacial lakes, which pose a greater risk of flooding in the event of a sudden spill.

A piece of the Triglav Glacier in Beijing

As glaciers are one of the best indicators of climate change, the Slovenian Olympic Committee has launched a special campaign ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. At that time, a piece of ice from the Triglav Glacier was sent on a 36-day journey through nine countries to Beijing. This was to highlight that environmental change is not only a huge challenge for the organisation and delivery of such events, but also for the existence of certain disciplines.

Besides that, many ice samples of the Triglav Glacier were taken by the team from Anton Melik Institute of Geography at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts as part of an independent survey of Slovenian glaciers. The ice was exhibited in Beijing, melted slowly during the Games, symbolically pointing out the consequences of the changing atmosphere, and after the Games it returned to Slovenia and is exhibited as glacial water in the Slovenian Alpine Museum in Mojstrana.