Results of the annual glaciological survey (2025) conducted on Italian glaciers are here presented. One hundred and seventy volunteers, assisted by numerous collaborators, operated last year in the three Alpine sectors (Piemonte – Valle d’Aosta, Lombardy and Triveneto) and in the Apennines (Calderone Glacier, Gran Sasso Group) observing 191 glaciers. One hundred and eleven glaciers were observed in the Piemonte – Valle d’Aosta sector, while frontal variation was measured at the snout of 44 glaciers. Twenty-eight and fifty-two glaciers were visited in the Lombardy sector and in the Triveneto sector, respectively (20 and 48 of which were measured, respectively). Mass balance measurements were conducted on 16 Italian glaciers during the 2024-‘25 hydrological year: 4 glaciers in the Western Alps (Piemonte – Valle d’Aosta sector), 11 in the Eastern Alps (three in the Lombardy Sector, the other glaciers in the Triveneto Sector) and one in the Central Apennines. Despite an overall favourable accumulation season, a sequence of intense heatwaves starting in mid-June and continuing through late August—although punctuated with cooler weather and snowfalls at high elevation—rapidly depleted the winter snowpack. This resulted in yet another negative mass-balance year for the Italian glaciers, albeit more comparable to the 2023–‘24 season than to the disastrous 2021–‘22 and 2022–‘23 seasons.
Annual glaciological survey of Italian glaciers (2025)
