The Presena Glacier above Passo Tonale is the latest Alpine glacier to attempt to cover its surface with an insulating and reflective ‘blanket’ this summer in a bid to slow its rate of melting.

More than 90,000 square metres of the glacier, which was still open for skiing last month, has been covered with a thin reflective material, a process already being used my glaciers in Austria such as Pitztal and Stubai, and in Switzerland and on Germany’s Zugspitze which ended summer snow sports a few years ago. In France snowmaking has been tried on the glacier at Val d’Isere, which is one of three glaciers in the country still open for summer snow sports.

Small scale tests of the material used on the Presena glacier have shown that it reduces melt rates by up to 60%, potentially good news for the glacier which a study found lost nearly two-fifths of its mass in one decade alone up to 2003 due to global warming.