Rhone Glacier, Switzerland (AP) – Climate change appears to make some ice rivers in Switzerland look like Swiss cheese: full of holes.
Matthias Huss Show from Glamos A. A glimpse into the ice rivers Ron – Who nourishes the named river flowing across Switzerland and France to the Mediterranean- He participated in the observation with the Associated Press this month and is heading to the ice extension of the first maintenance mission in the summer to monitor its health.
The state of Switzerland appeared in the ice rivers in a blatant and exciting show of the international community last month when a clay collapse from the mountain mountains The southwestern village of Blatin was flooded. The ice field on the mountain, which hindered a mass of rocks near the peak, is the way – to send the collapse to the village of the valley below. Fortunately, the city was previously evacuated.
Experts say geological transformations, and have less than global warming, played a role.
He said that the Alps and Switzerland – the home of most of the ice rivers in any European country largely – they saw them retreat for 170 years, but with the rise and decline over time until the eighties of the last century. Since then, the decline has been fixed, with 2022 and 2023 worst ever. He said last year was “a little better.”
“Now, this year does not seem good too, so we see that we have a clear acceleration direction in the melting of the ice rivers,” said Haas, a lecturer at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
Less snowy and more heat creates punishing conditions
The European Union Climate Center said last month. It was The finest weapons on the record Throughout the world, although temperatures in Europe were less than average running for this month Compared to the average from 1991 to 2020.
Europe is not alone. In a report on The Asian climate was issued on MondayThe United Nations World Meteorological Organization said that the low snowfall in the winter and the severe summer heat last year “was punished for the ice rivers” – with 23 out of 24 ice rivers in the center of the Himalayas and the Tian Shan group, which suffers from “mass loss” in 2024.
The healthy ice river is “dynamic”, by generating a new snow where the snow falls on the upper altitudes during the melting of low altitudes: the losses in the mass are compensated at low levels of gains above.
The obsession said that the accelerated climate is pushing to the highest melting to higher altitudes, as such flows will slow down or even stop completely, and the iceberg will mainly become “an ice patch there.”
“This is a position we see more and more on our ice rivers: that the ice is no longer dynamic anymore,” he said. “She rests there and melts in place.”
Haws said that this lack of dynamic renewal is the most likely process behind the appearance and continuation of the holes, and it appears to be the result of water disorder at the bottom of the ice or air flowing through the gaps that appear inside the ice blocks.
“First, holes appear in the middle, then grow and grow, and suddenly the roof of these holes began to collapse,” he said. “Then these holes become visible from the surface. These holes were not well known a few years ago, but now we see them often.”
He said that such an affected ice, “is a Swiss cheese gets more holes everywhere, and these holes collapse – and they are not good for ice rivers.”
The perceived effects of fish fisheries to the border
Richard Ally, a professor of earth sciences and ice specialist at Pennsylvania State University, pointed out that the ice shrinkage has extensive impacts on agriculture, fisheries, drinking water levels and border tensions when it comes to rivers across the border.
He said in an email: “The biggest fears of mountainous ice rivers may be water problems – now, the summer -shrinking ice rivers (often the dehydration season) supports abnormally higher than usual, but it will be replaced with the disappearance of icebergs with low abnormal flows,” he said in an email.
For Switzerland, there is another potential victim: electricity: the country of the Alps gets the vast majority of its power through the electrical plants that it moves from lakes and rivers, and it can expose the icebergs widely to endanger this.
With spiral exercises, Huss sends ice chips as it flies while heavily in the hole in the iceberg. Then with an auxiliary, he cancels the detailed metal pole-like the basic ice river monitoring technology that has been present for decades-and clicked together to push it down. This serves as a measuring stick for the depth of the iceberg.
He said: “We have a network of risks that are dug in the ice, as we determine the melting of the collective loss of ice rivers from year to year.” “When the ice is dissolved, which is currently at a speed of 5 to 10 centimeters (2-4 inches) per day, this pole will return to appearing.”
He reaches his head – about 2.5 meters (8 feet) – indicates the height of the stake dug in September, indicating that the ice mass has shrunk a lot. He said that in the hot year of 2022, it was nearly 10 meters of vertical ice in one year.
Some glaciers went forever
The planet is already running against Increase the target cover of 1.5 ° C At the global temperatures stipulated in the Paris Climate Agreement for the year 2015, concerns about the global warming that led to this deal recently by commercial wars and conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East and other geopolitical issues have been overwhelmed.
“If we can reduce or reduce global warming to 1.5 degrees, we will not be able to save this ice mountain,” said, admitting that many Swiss ice rivers will disappear in the future. As a person, he feels obsession with passion. As the world of ice, it is stunned by the speed of change.
“It is always difficult to see these glaciers melt, and you even see them completely disappear. Some observation sites that I would have gone for 20 years have completely disappeared in the past years,” he said. “It was very sad – if you exchange this shiny white color with these fragile rocks that lie around.”
He added, “But on the other hand,” it is also a very interesting time as a world to testify to these very rapid changes. “
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Kiten mentioned from Geneva.
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