Calderone glacier

The Calderone glacier (Ghiacciaio del Calderone) located in the Gran Sasso d’Italia mountain group in Abruzzo, Italy lies just beneath Corno Grande, the highest peak in the Apennines.

With the disappearance of the Corral de la Veleta glacier (37° N) in 1913, which lay in Spain's Sierra Nevada, "Il Calderone" became Europe's southernmost glacier (42°28′N, 13°33′E). If present deglaciation trends continue, the Calderone will soon share Corral de la Veleta's fate.

In 1797, the Calderone had an estimated volume of over 4 million cubic meters; by 1916, the glacier’s volume had decreased to 3.3 million cubic meters, and by 1990, it had decreased to 360,931 cubic meters. [http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghiacciaio_del_Calderone] In 1998 Italian glaciologists at a symposium in L'Aquila predicted that the Calderone would vanish within a few decades. cite book |Visconti= |first= Guido | coauthors=M. Beniston , Emilio D. Iannorelli, Diego Barba |title= Global Change and Protected Areas (Advances in Global Change Research) |2001= |publisher= Kluwer Academic Publishers|location=New York |isbn=0-7923-6918-1|pages=425-435