Two countries agree to modifications beneath Matterhorn peak, one of Europe’s highest summits
Switzerland and Italy have redrawn a border that traverses an Alpine peak as melting glaciers shift the historically defined frontier.
The two countries agreed to the modifications beneath the Matterhorn, one of the highest mountains in Europe, which straddles Switzerland’s Zermatt region and Italy’s Aosta valley.
Continue reading...Rising temperatures causing largest glacier in Dolomites to lose 7-10cm of depth a day, according to scientists
The Marmolada glacier, the largest and most symbolic of the Dolomites, could melt completely by 2040 owing to rising average temperatures, experts have said.
Italian scientists who are monitoring glaciers and the impact of climate emergency, and who took part in a campaign launched by environmentalist group Legambiente, the international commission for the protection of the Alps (Cipra), with the scientific partnership of the Italian Glacier Committee, said on Monday the Marmolada was losing between 7 and 10cm of depth a day.
Continue reading...Search for more survivors of cave collapse that killed one called off as records show 23 not 25 people were on tour
After a 17-hour, 200-person rescue operation in which first responders used chainsaws and ice picks to cut through a collapsed ice cave to track down two missing tourists, police in Iceland have called off the search and said they now believe that no one had ever been missing.
Officials in Iceland said on Monday that after examining tour operator records, they had concluded that 23 people were on the tour, not 25 as had been previously reported.
Continue reading...Incident happened as tour group of 25 was visiting Breiðamerkurjökull glacier in south-east of country
Two people are missing and two others were seriously injured when an ice cave collapsed in south-east Iceland while a tour group was visiting the area, police have said.
A group of 25 people were on an organised tour of the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier with a guide when the cave collapsed.
Continue reading...Scientists reclassify Humboldt glacier, also known as La Corona, after it melted faster than expected
Venezuela has lost its last remaining glacier after it shrunk so much that scientists reclassified it as an ice field.
It is thought Venezuela is the first country to have lost all its glaciers in modern times.
Continue reading...Idea Angela Rawlings had a decade ago for Snæfellsjökull has snowballed into a full-blown campaign with a team of 50 people
Standing in the shadow of Iceland’s Snæfellsjökull, – a 700,000-year-old glacier perched on a volcano and visible to half the country’s population on any given day – in 2010, Angela Rawlings was struck by an unconventional thought.
“It suddenly just came to me. What if the glacier was president?” said Rawlings. It was a seemingly unorthodox way to push forward a movement that was already swiftly advancing; Ecuador had enshrined legal rights for nature while Māori in New Zealand were working to secure legal personhood for the Whanganui River.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Prof Matt King says accelerated melting could transform country and affect viability of some agricultural industries
A leading Antarctic scientist has urged the Albanese government to pay closer attention to abrupt changes under way in the southern continent, warning they will affect Australians in ways that are little understood and research into them is drastically underfunded.
The head of the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, Prof Matt King, said he found it embarrassing how little was known about the local and global ramifications of changes including a historic drop in floating sea ice cover, the accelerating melting of giant ice sheets and the slowing of a deep ocean current known as the Southern Ocean overturning circulation.
Continue reading...Arctic Ice argues its rare, pure product can be part of Greenland’s green transition and greater independence
Frozen daiquiri anyone? Drinking a cocktail on top of a Dubai skyscraper may seem decadent enough, but a Greenland entrepreneur wants to add ancient glacier ice scooped from the fjords to the glass, for the ultimate international thrill.
Arctic Ice harvests ice from the fjords of Greenland, and then ships them to the United Arab Emirates to sell to exclusive bars. Using glacial ice in drinks is a common practice in Greenland, and, over the years, several entrepreneurs have unsuccessfully attempted to export it. Its co-founder Malik V Rasmussen said the ice, which has been compressed over millennia, is completely without bubbles and melts more slowly than regular ice. It is also purer than the frozen mineral water usually used in Dubai’s ice cubes.
Continue reading...El Niño weather pattern could accelerate melting, leading to sea level rise
Two of the world’s few tropical glaciers, in Indonesia, are melting and their ice may vanish by 2026 or sooner as an El Niño weather pattern threatens to accelerate their demise, the country’s geophysics agency has said.
The agency, known as BMKG, has said the El Niño phenomenon could lead to the most severe dry season in Indonesia since 2019, increasing the risk of forest fires and threatening supplies of clean water.
Continue reading...Police confirm remains discovered on melting glacier in Swiss mountains are those of German climber
The remains of a German mountain climber who disappeared while crossing a glacier near the Matterhorn mountain nearly 40 years ago have been discovered in melting ice.
Two climbers found the remains on 12 July while hiking along the Theodul Glacier in Zermatt, Valais, southern Switzerland, police said on Thursday.
Continue reading...If global heating continues at current rate of 2.7C, losses will be greater with 68% of glaciers disappearing
Half the planet’s glaciers will have melted by 2100 even if humanity sticks to goals set out in the Paris climate agreement, according to research that finds the scale and impacts of glacial loss are greater than previously thought. At least half of that loss will happen in the next 30 years.
Researchers found 49% of glaciers would disappear under the most optimistic scenario of 1.5C of warming. However, if global heating continued under the current scenario of 2.7C of warming, losses would be more significant, with 68% of glaciers disappearing, according to the paper, published in Science. There would be almost no glaciers left in central Europe, western Canada and the US by the end of the next century if this happened.
Continue reading...Authorities keen to avoid repeat of fatal glacier fall and avalanche but need to protect local tourism industry
The summer season was just getting into the swing in the mountain towns based around the Marmolada, the highest peak in the Italian Dolomites, when a huge mass of ice from a glacier on its north side snapped off last Sunday afternoon, causing a fatal avalanche.
Hotels, restaurants and mountain refuges were packed, and trails busy with hikers, climbers and cyclists, many flocking to the mountains in search of slightly fresher temperatures during Italy’s intense heatwave.
Continue reading...Cracks and fissures stoke fears of breakup that could lead to half-metre rise in global sea levels – or more
Twenty years ago, an area of ice thought to weigh almost 500bn tonnes dramatically broke off the Antarctic continent and shattered into thousands of icebergs into the Weddell Sea.
The 1,255-sq-mile (3,250-sq-km) Larsen B ice shelf was known to be melting fast but no one had predicted that it would take just one month for the 200-metre-thick behemoth to completely disintegrate.
Continue reading...From extreme weather obliterating homes to rising sea levels ruining crops, climate breakdown is a terrifying daily reality for many
Throughout the 2021 United Nations climate change conference, the Guardian will be publishing the stories of the people whose lives have been upended – sometimes devastated – by the climate breakdown.
Continue reading...Two decades ago Richard Stiles escaped an avalanche in New Zealand, but friend Steve Robinson wasn’t so lucky. Now the mountain has given up some of its secrets
When mountaineer Chris Hill found a backpack with an old camera in it on the Hooker Glacier – an 11km chunk of ice on New Zealand’s South Island – he was intrigued and decided to get the film inside developed.
Hooker is at the base of Aoraki (Mount Cook), in a national park of icy peaks where hundreds of climbers have died, dozens of them never to be found.
Continue reading...Precipitation was so unexpected, scientists had no gauges to measure it, and is stark sign of climate crisis
Rain has fallen on the summit of Greenland’s huge ice cap for the first time on record. Temperatures are normally well below freezing on the 3,216-metre (10,551ft) peak, and the precipitation is a stark sign of the climate crisis.
Scientists at the US National Science Foundation’s summit station saw rain falling throughout 14 August but had no gauges to measure the fall because the precipitation was so unexpected. Across Greenland, an estimated 7bn tonnes of water was released from the clouds.
Continue reading...Researchers say climate change is driving the melting, which has seen Kebnekaise lose more than 20 metres in height since the mid-1990s
Sweden’s only remaining mountaintop glacier, which until 2019 was also its highest peak, lost another two metres in height in the past year due to rising air temperatures driven by climate change, Stockholm University says.
In 2019, the south peak of the Kebnekaise massif was demoted to second in the rankings of Swedish mountains after a third of its glacier melted. Kebnekaise’s north peak, where there is no glacier, is now the highest in the Nordic country.
Continue reading...Analysis shows significant risk of cascading events even at 2C of heating, with severe long-term effects
Ice sheets and ocean currents at risk of climate tipping points can destabilise each other as the world heats up, leading to a domino effect with severe consequences for humanity, according to a risk analysis.
Tipping points occur when global heating pushes temperatures beyond a critical threshold, leading to accelerated and irreversible impacts. Some large ice sheets in Antarctica are thought to already have passed their tipping points, meaning large sea-level rises in coming centuries.
Continue reading...Scientists say ice equivalent to 1-2 metres of sea level rise is probably already doomed to melt
A significant part of the Greenland ice sheet is on the brink of a tipping point, after which accelerated melting would become inevitable even if global heating was halted, according to new research.
Rising temperatures caused by the climate crisis have already seen trillions of tonnes of Greenland’s ice pour into the ocean. Melting its ice sheet completely would eventually raise global sea level by 7 metres.
Continue reading...Accelerating retreat of glaciers in Lombardy and Trentino Alto-Aldige reveals preserved history of ‘White War’
The soldiers dug the wooden barracks into a cave on the top of Mount Scorluzzo, a 3,095-metre (10,154ft) peak overlooking the Stelvio pass. For the next three-and-a-half years, the cramped, humid space was home to about 20 men from the Austro-Hungarian army as they fought against Italian troops in what became known as the White War, a battle waged across treacherous and bitterly cold Alpine terrain during the first world war.
Fought mainly in the Alps of the Lombardy region of Italy and the Dolomites in Trentino Alto-Adige, the White War was a period of history frozen in time until the 1990s, when global warming started to reveal an assortment of perfectly preserved relics – weapons, sledges, letters, diaries and, as the retreat of glaciers hastened, the bodies of soldiers.
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