The study, published in the journal Science, is based on satellite imagery of the mountain range over the past 38 years.
Study first author Sabine Rumpf, an ecologist at the University of Basel, said her team was surprised to find such a huge rate of greening.
Greening is a well-known phenomenon inArctic, but so far it has not been widespread in mountainous areas. However, the poles and mountains are warming faster than the rest of the planet, so the researchers suspected that this might happen.
For their analysis, the team examined regions at 1,700 meters above sea level to exclude areas used for agriculture. They also did not analyze forested areas and glaciers.
According to the results, which covered 1984-2021, there was no snow cover in summer on almost 10% of all the studied territories.
Rumpf noted that satellite imagery canonly to confirm the presence or absence of snow, but the first effect of warming is a decrease in the depth of snow cover. This is impossible to see from space.
The researchers also compared the amount of vegetation using wavelength analysis to determine the amount of chlorophyll. They found that plant growth increased by 77% of the area studied.
As a result, most of the drinking water that comes from the melting snow will begin to leak and disappear even faster. The habitat of species adapted to the alpine environment is also disturbed.
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