Swiss glacier collapse renews focus on risks of climate change as glaciers retreat around the world

The landslide that buried preponderance of a Swiss village this week is focusing renewed attention on the role of global warming in glacier collapses around the world and the increasing dangers How glaciers collapse from the Alps and Andes to the Himalayas and Antarctica can differ scientists say But in almost every instance surroundings change is playing a role In Switzerland the mountainside gave way Wednesday near the village of Blatten in the southern L tschental valley because the rock face above the Birch Glacier had become unstable when mountain permafrost melted causing debris to fall and cover the glacier in modern years commented Martin Truffer a physics professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who studies how glaciers move While the debris insulated the glacier and slowed melting its weight caused the ice to begin moving which accelerated dramatically a meager weeks ago Officials ordered the evacuation of about people as well as all livestock from the village in latest days when it became clear that there s a whole mountainside that s about to collapse stated Truffer who is from Switzerland Glacial lakes pose threat Lakes that form at the base of glaciers as they melt and retreat also sometimes burst often with catastrophic results Water can even lift an entire glacier allowing it to drain revealed Truffer adding that Alaska s capital of Juneau has flooded in latest years because a lake forms every year on a rapidly retreating glacier and eventually bursts In an apartment building-sized chunk of the Marmolada glacier in Italy s Dolomite mountains detached during a summer heat wave sending an avalanche of debris down the popular summer hiking destination killing A glacier in Tibet s Aru mountain range suddenly collapsed in killing nine people and their livestock followed a limited months later by the collapse of another glacier There also have been collapses in Peru including one in that caused a mini tsunami preponderance in recent months a glacial lagoon overflowed in April triggering a landslide that killed two It s amazing sometimes how rapidly they can collapse disclosed Lonnie Thompson a glacier expert at the Ohio State University The instability of these glaciers is a real and growing trouble and there are thousands and thousands of people that are at threat Scientists say melting glaciers will raise sea levels for decades but the loss of inland glaciers also acutely affects those living nearby who rely on them for water for drinking water and agriculture No way to stop the melting Scientists say greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal have already locked in enough global warming to doom multiple of the world s glaciers which already have retreated significantly For example glaciers in the Alps have lost of their area since and the rate at which ice is being lost has been accelerating with projections that all the glaciers in the Alps could be gone in this century Thompson commented Switzerland which has the bulk glaciers of any country in Europe saw of its total glacier volume disappear in the second-biggest decline in a single year after a drop in A scrutiny unveiled that Peru has lost more than half of its glacier surface in the last six decades and glaciers disappeared due to conditions change between and mostly due to the increase in the average global temperature A survey published Thursday in Science announced that even if global temperatures stabilized at their current level of the world s glaciers still would be lost But if warming were limited to degrees Celsius degrees Fahrenheit the long-term warming limit since the late s called for by the Paris atmosphere agreement twice as much glacier ice could be preserved than would be otherwise Even so a great number of areas will become ice-free no matter what Truffer the University of Alaska expert There s places in Alaska where we ve shown that it doesn t take any more global warming for them to disappear Truffer revealed The reason specific still exist is absolutely because it takes a certain amount of time for them to melt But the context is already such that they re screwed