Calderone glacier

The Calderone glacier (Italian: Ghiacciaio del Calderone) was a historical mountain glacier located in the Gran Sasso d'Italia massif, in the Abruzzi Apennines, in central Italy. Following its fragmentation in 2000, the current glacial system consists of two glacierets found between 2,650 and 2,830 m a.s.l. within a cirque just beneath the summit of Mt. Corno Grande (2,912 m a.s.l.), which is the highest peak in the Apennine Mountains. With the exception of a few small multi-year snow patches, these two glacierets constitute the last perennial ice bodies still active in the entire Apennine range. In 1998, Italian glaciologists at a symposium in L'Aquila predicted that the Calderone glacier would vanish within a couple of decades, with more recent estimates indicating that the remaining glacierets could disappear entirely by 2050, if significant reductions in carbon emissions are not achieved. After the disappearance of the Corral de la Veleta glacier (37°N, 3°W) in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in southern Spain, in 1913, the Calderone glacier (42°28'N, 13°34'E) became one of the southernmost glacial systems in Europe, together with a few other small glaciers and glacierets located at similar latitudes. These ice bodies currently include the Snezhnika (41°46'N, 23°24'E) and Banski Suhodol (41°46'N, 23°23'E) glacierets in the Pirin Mountains, in southwestern Bulgaria; the Maja e Kolacit glacier (42°30'N, 19°55'E) in the Prokletije Mountains, in northern Albania; the Maladeta glacier (42°65'N, 0°63'E) in the Pyrenees Mountains, in northeastern Spain; and the Debeli Namet glacier (43°6'N, 19°4'E) in the Durmitor massif, in the Dinaric Alps, in northwestern Montenegro.