http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0720-03.htm
Published on Sunday,
July 20, 2003 by the Observer /UK
Decades of Devastation Ahead as Global
Warming Melts the Alps
by Robin McKie
Mountain guide Victor Saunders and his companion Craig Higgins
had reached the Solvay bivouac hut on the Matterhorn's Hornli
ridge last week when their balmy morning climb turned into a
nightmare.
'An enormous avalanche
hurtled down the mountain's east face,'
said Saunders, one of Britain's leading climbers. 'I have never
seen so much rock falling at one time.' The pair survived by cowering
under an overhang as a rain of boulders ricocheted past them.
It would have been
a remarkable enough incident on its own.
But within a couple of hours, another massive rockfall thundered
down the Matterhorn - this time from its north face. 'Even then
we still did not realise what kind of a day we were going to have,'
said Saunders, for a mere hour later, distant thunder and billowing
dust betrayed the triggering of yet another avalanche.
In the end more than
70 climbers had to be hauled from the slopes
of the Matterhorn, in Switzerland, on Monday - one of the biggest
mass rescues in mountaineering history - as rockfalls battered
its ridges and valleys. Those climbing its slopes could have been
forgiven for thinking the crown jewel of the Alps had started
falling
apart under their feet.
And they would not
have been far wrong - for scientists now believe
global warming is melting the Alps, threatening widespread devastation
over the next two decades.
The great mountain
range's icy crust of permafrost, which holds
its stone pillars and rockfaces together, and into which its cable
car
stations and pylons are rooted, is disappearing. Already several
recent
Alpine disasters, including the avalanches which killed more than
50 people at the Austrian resort of Galtur four years ago, are
being
blamed on the melting of permafrost.
And in future, things
are likely to get much worse - as scientists
will point out tomorrow at the opening, in Zurich, of the International
Permafrost Association conference. Held every four years, the
meeting
provides climatologists, civil engineers, and geologists with
a
chance to exchange research data about the icy layers that coat
the ground in the world's coldest regions. Rarely has a scientific
meeting been so timely.
'I am quite sure what
happened on the Matterhorn last week was the
result of the Alps losing its permafrost,' said civil engineer
Professor
Michael Davies of Dundee University, and a conference organiser.
'We
have found that the ground temperature in the Alps around the
Matterhorn has risen considerably over the past decade. The ice
that
holds mountain slopes and rock faces together is simply disappearing.
At this rate, it will vanish completely - with profound consequences.'
Part of the problem,
engineers and geologists have discovered,
is that air temperature increases - the result of climate change
- are being magnified fivefold underground. A test borehole, dug
in
Murtel in southern Switzerland, has revealed that frozen sub-surface
soils has warmed by more than a degree Celsius since 1990. In
addition
to general air temperature rises that are heating up the ground,
increased evaporation caused by warmer summers is also triggering
thicker falls of snow which insulate the soil and keep it warm
in winter.
The trouble is not
just that ice is disappearing, however. Research
by Davies - to be outlined this week at the Zurich conference
- has discovered that ice as it warms, but before it actually
melts,
may actually be more unstable than ice that is turning into water.
The key to this work has been Davies's work with a seven-metre
centrifuge
in his laboratory. 'When you spin things round very quickly, you
create
very powerful gravitational fields, and when you place objects
in these
fields the effects of gravity are speeded up,' he said. 'We have
built
model slopes and peaks and put them in our centrifuge to study
what
happens when soil and rock is warmed up and the permafrost, which
holds the ground together, is degraded. Essentially, we are simulating
landslides.'
The aim is to find
out how to spot early signs of the imminent collapse
of buildings and valleys, he said. 'Cracks and strains, the first
evidence that cable stations and other buildings are under threat,
may be easy to spot. This gives engineers an opportunity to put
things right.'
That is the theory.
The abrupt disintegration of the Matterhorn
last week reveals how tricky life in the Alps - one of the world's
top tourist destinations - is going to be. As Davies said:
'We are going to see a lot more of this sort of devastation.'
It is not an issue
that worries Victor Saunders too much at
present, however. He is merely grateful he got off the Matterhorn
alive.
In the end, he and
Higgins had to be clipped to the end of a
100-foot wire cable trailed by a rescue helicopter. Then they
were flown from the mountain, hanging like 'a cargo of fragile
china dolls,' he said.
Guides at the mountain
resort of Zermatt are now mending the
fixed ropes damaged by the avalanches in the hope that they will
be able to keep the Matterhorn open for the rest of the climbing
season.
© Guardian Newspapers
Limited 2003
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