AKIPRESS.COM - Austrian glaciers will be gone in 45 years, euronews reports, citing the Austrian Alpine Club's (OeAV) glacier measurement report.

"The Austrian glaciers will be gone in several decades. There might be some remnants in shadowed locations — maybe at the Glockner glacier on the north-east side, some areas in the Oetztal valley. But de facto, in 40 to 45 years all of Austria will be pretty much ice-free," head of the glacier measurement service Andreas Kellerer-Pirklbauer told reporters at a press conference in Salzburg.

The report details the rapid shrinking of 93 glaciers in Austria in the last couple of years. The Pasterze glacier receded the most with over 203 metres. The Rettenbachferner glacier in Tirol came in second, losing 127 metres of ice. Of the 93 glaciers observed, only one did not shrink further.

Member of the Austrian Alpine Club Gerhard Lieb noted that the process of shrinking of Austrian glaciers in the coming decades cannot be stopped.

"Only if snow and ice would start forming again now the glaciers could at least maintain their current size, but you can't save the Austrian glaciers anymore, because the systems are too sluggish," Lieb explained.

The experts said that the continued existence of Austria's glaciers is down entirely to ice reserves from the past.