Calderone glacier

The Calderone glacier (Italian: Ghiacciaio del Calderone) is a glacier located in the Apennine Mountains in Abruzzo, Italy. Found in the Gran Sasso d'Italia mountain group, it lies just beneath the Corno Grande, the highest peak in the Apennines.

With the disappearance of the Corral de la Veleta glacier in the Sierra Nevada in 1913, "Il Calderone" became one of Europe's southernmost known glaciers (42°28′N, 13°33′E), being slightly to the north only compared to Snezhnika (latitude of 41°46′09″ N) and Banski Suhodol Glaciers in Pirin Mountain in Bulgaria. If present deglaciation trends continue, the Calderone may soon disappear as well. The discovery of a number of small glaciers in the Accursed Mountains in 2009 seemed to threaten Calderone's positions.

In 1794, the Calderone had an estimated volume of over 4 million cubic metres. By 1916, the glacier’s volume had decreased to 3.3 million cubic metres, and by 1990 it had declined further to 360,931 cubic metres. In 1998, Italian glaciologists at a symposium in L'Aquila predicted that the Calderone would vanish within a couple of decades.

Some glaciologists predicted that the glacier would disappear by 2020. However, 2014 was slightly more favourable for the glacier; by the end of August 2014, the volume of residual ice was greater than during the same period in 2013. The glacier disappeared in 2016 following periods of drought.