“We are very sure that Thwaites is going to continue to retreat, and ultimately the retreat is going to accelerate,” according to a team of scientists studying the Thwaites Glacier. A six-year study of the “doomsday glacier” in the Antarctic concluded that “by the end of the 23rd century, Thwaites glacier and much of the West Antarctic ice sheet might be lost.” Meanwhile, Sweden’s Syl glacier Collapsed.
Rising global temperatures are weakening glaciers in mountainous areas, where millions of people rely on these reservoirs as a source of water.
Excerpt from this Washington Post story:
On Friday around 2:45 p.m., British tourist Harry Shimmin reached the highest point in his trek along the Jukku pass in the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan. He separated from the group to take pictures from the edge of a cliff when he heard deep ice cracking behind him. He turned around to an avalanche of glacial ice and snow rushing toward him and within moments found himself in a blizzard.
“When the snow started coming over and it got dark / harder to breath, I was bricking it and thought I might die,” Shimmin wrote an Instagram post. Shimmin and his group survived, although one member was sent to the hospital.
The avalanche was the second glacier collapse of the week, demonstrating the perils of human-caused climate change amid a blistering hot summer in parts of Europe and Asia.
On July 3, a glacier chunk as large as an apartment building detached in Italy’s Dolomites region and killed at least 11 hikers. The block separated from a melting glacier on Marmolada mountain and triggered an avalanche of ice, rock and debris below, where many tourists hike during the summer.
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The glacier has been shrinking for years, and climate change contributed to the tragedy, Italy’s prime minister said. Fourteen people are missing.
Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:
At least seven people died, eight were injured and 14 were missing after a chunk of a glacier collapsed in the Dolemites in Italy on Sunday, according to Maurizio Fugatti, the president of Trento Province.
A deluge of snow, ice and rock on the Marmolada mountain group, the tallest in the Dolomites, overran a popular summit route, where a number of alpinists had been rope climbing, the emergency service for the Veneto region posted on Twitter.
Walter Milan, a spokesman for Italy’s National Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps, said that it was the biggest accident of its kind on the mountain in decades.
The Marmolada had experienced record temperatures in recent days, he said, amid a heat wave that has scorched parts of Europe for several weeks. The high temperatures could have contributed to the collapse by accelerating the melting of the ice, Mr. Milan said, adding that it was a very complex phenomenon with many factors at play.
At the news conference with Mr. Fugatti at a village at the foot of the mountain, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said while the event could be attributed to some unpredictable elements, “it certainly depends on the deterioration of the environment and the climate situation.” He added that the government must reflect on what happened and act so that it did not happen again.
The effects of global warming on the glacier on the Marmolada, known as the Queen of the Dolomites, have been unfolding for years, and it has been shrinking at a fast pace.
Between 2004 and 2015 the volume of the glacier shrank by 30 percent, according to a 2019 study by Italy’s National Research Council and international universities. If the trend continues, the glacier will disappear in the next 25 to 30 years, the research predicted.
Village at center of India glacier collapse warned of impending disaster for decades. No one listened
Village at center of India glacier collapse warned of impending disaster for decades. No one listened
When contractors came to her Himalayan forest to cut down thousands of trees, Gaura Devi rallied the women of her village and marched into the woods.
Armed with only their bare hands and fierce determination to save the forest upon which their livelihoods depended, Gaura Devi and the women put themselves between the trees and the contractors’ chainsaws.
The state government had hatched a plan to…