Latest news with #BirchGlacier
Reuters
an hour ago
- Climate
- Reuters
Swiss town left under rubble after chunk of glacier breaks off
Blatten's 300 residents had already been evacuated earlier in May after part of the mountain behind the Birch Glacier began to crumble.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
What Causes Glaciers to Collapse like the Event That Buried a Swiss Village?
An unstable glacier in the Swiss Alps collapsed this week, sending a deluge of rock, ice and mud through the valley below and burying the village of Blatten almost entirely. Scientists had warned about the possibility of a dangerous event related to the glacier, and village residents had been evacuated days earlier—but the glacier's near-total breakup came as a surprise. One person is reported missing. Government officials initially estimated the debris deposit to be several dozen meters thick and approximately two kilometers long. Making matters worse, the collapse of the glacier, called the Birch Glacier, blocked the flow of the Lonza River, which runs through the valley. As a result, a newly created lake upstream from the debris field flooded an area that has now overflowed into the deposit zone, which could cause a debris flow downstream. As of Friday afternoon local time, officials have reported that the water flow is approaching the top of the scree cone, which is the accumulation of loose, rocky debris. The glacier's collapse and the subsequent landslide—which was so intense that it corresponded to a magnitude 3.1 earthquake captured by the Swiss Seismological Service—likely arose from a series of rockfalls that occurred above the glacier over the past couple of weeks. The rocks, dislodged because of high-altitude snowmelt, exerted significant pressure on the relatively small glacier, according to officials. Experts are looking into longer-term factors that may have weakened the glacier's stability even before those rockfalls. Christophe Lambiel, a glaciologist who also specializes in high-mountain geology at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, said on RTS Swiss Television that the rockfalls were linked to climate change. 'The increase in the falling rocks is due to the melting permafrost, which increases instability,' Lambiel said, as reported on NPR. New research published on Thursday in Science finds that, under current climate policies, more than three quarters of the world's glacial mass could disappear by the end of this century. In this scenario, almost all small and relatively low-elevation glaciers, like the one in Switzerland, would be wiped out. In a 2024 article for Scientific American, journalist Alec Luhn explained that 'the deterioration of ice and snow is triggering feedback loops that will heat the world even further. Permafrost, the frozen ground that holds twice as much carbon as is currently found in the atmosphere, is thawing and releasing these stores.' Thawing permafrost is not just dangerous because it creates instability, as in the case of Birch Glacier. As Luhn wrote, 'Research has revealed that the permafrost zone is now releasing more carbon than it absorbs, heating the planet further.' [Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter] It's clear that the weakening of Switzerland's Birch Glacier was at least partially caused by rockfall. There are other ways in which changes to glaciers are causing risk—and occasional devastation—to people, communities and infrastructure. As a 2023 E&E News article explained, 'At least 15 million people worldwide live in the flood paths of dangerous glacial lakes that can abruptly burst their banks and rush down mountainsides.' These so-called glacial lake outburst floods can be fatal and cause catastrophic damage. 'The deterioration of the planet's snow and ice regions,' wrote Luhn in his 2024 article, 'is costing the world billions of dollars in damages,' according to a 2024 State of the Cryosphere report Giant plastic blankets, gravity snow guns and painted rocks are all potential strategies to slow ice melt in the world's mountain regions. The sound that glaciers make when water is coursing through their icy cracks can be used to predict glacial lake outburst floods—and thus to save lives. There's also a growing sense of reckoning with the fate of the world's glaciers. An essay about the Global Glacier Casualty List, which documents glaciers that have melted or are critically endangered, was also released on Thursday in Science. In it, Rice University anthropologists Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer write, 'The world's first funeral for a glacier was held in Iceland in 2019 for a little glacier called 'Ok….' Since then, memorials for disappeared glaciers have increased across the world, illustrating the integral connection between loss in the natural world and human rituals of remembrance.'
Associated Press
a day ago
- General
- Associated Press
Swiss president pledges aid for Alpine villagers left homeless after glacier collapse
GENEVA (AP) — Switzerland's president on Friday said evacuees from an Alpine village whose homes and businesses were destroyed by a landslide caused by a glacier collapse were 'not alone,' and the government was calculating ways to help. Karin Keller-Sutter spoke after a helicopter flight to see for herself the damage to the village of Blatten that was largely destroyed on Wednesday as an estimated 10 millions of tons of mud, ice and rock thundered down from the Birch glacier overhead. 'The force with which the mountain here wiped out an entire village is indescribable,' Keller-Sutter said. 'I'd like to tell you all that you're not alone. The whole of Switzerland is with you, and not just (people) in Switzerland.' Officials limited access to the area and warned that waters from the Lonza River, which has been dammed up by deposits stacked tens of meters high over a 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) swath of valley, had pooled into a lake. The future course of those waters could not yet be predicted precisely. 'Unfortunately, the danger has not yet been averted,' Keller-Sutter said. While the authorities were not able to prevent the natural disaster, the country has the 'expertise and financial resources' to cope with such events, she added. Blatten had been evacuated about 10 days earlier after experts determined a growing threat from the loosening glacier. However, a 64-year-old man remains missing and authorities have called off a search for him. Stephane Ganzer, an elected official who runs security in the Valais, said no evacuations were as-yet planned for villages downstream from Blatten that could face flooding if the Lonza's welled-up waters break through the pileup of mud. 'We don't want anybody else to go missing,' he said. 'We will put no person in danger on the ground: No police officer, no soldier, no specialist, no member of civil security or fire squads.' He added: 'Someone asked me before: 'Who's the chief in charge here?' And I replied, there's only one chief: nature.'
Times of Oman
a day ago
- Climate
- Times of Oman
Swiss communities on alert after massive landslide
Lötschental Valley: A number of Alpine communities in Switzerland's Lötschental valley have been asked to be ready to evacuate their homes following a massive landslide on Wednesday. Rivers in the area have become swollen and have dammed up behind the rubble, rock and ice that thundered down into the valley after the Birch Glacier began to collapse in the southwestern canton of Valais. "We ask residents to make personal preparations so that they can leave their homes as quickly as possible," the municipalities of Steg-Hohtenn and Gampel-Bratsch in the Lötschental Valley posted on their website late Thursday. Wednesday's collapse saw millions of cubic meters of ice, mud and rock engulf the village of Blatten and authorities have yet to locate a 64-year-old man who has not been seen since the collapse. Blatten's 300 residents were evacuated at short notice last week following an assessment by geologists that found that a landslide was imminent. Local authorities suspended the search for the missing man on Thursday afternoon, as conditions became too dangerous with warnings of further rockfalls. The debris has blocked the course of the River Lonza and has caused a lake to form, which in turn has heightened fears the mass could dislodge and impact communities further downstream. Stephane Ganzer, head of the security division for the Valais canton, told reporters that water levels have been rising by 80 centimetres (31.5 inches) an hour as a result of the blockage. The army is on standby with water pumps and earth-moving machinery and will get to work once conditions improve.
ABC News
2 days ago
- Climate
- ABC News
Flood risk threatens Swiss valley after village destroyed by glacier
Water trapped behind a mass of glacial debris that buried a village in southern Switzerland has sparked warnings that further evacuations may be needed amid the risk of flooding in the Alpine valley. A deluge of millions of cubic metres of ice, mud and rock crashed down a mountain on Wednesday, engulfing the village of Blatten, and the few houses that remained later flooded. Its 300 residents had been evacuated earlier in May after part of the mountain behind the Birch Glacier began to crumble. Flooding increased on Thursday as the mound of debris almost 2 kilometres across clogged the path of the River Lonza, causing a lake to form amid the wreckage, raising fears that the morass could dislodge and trigger more evacuations. Late on Thursday, local authorities urged residents in Gampel and Steg, villages several kilometres further along the Lonza Valley, to prepare for possible evacuation in case of emergency. The army is standing by with water pumps, diggers and other heavy equipment to provide relief when conditions allow. Authorities were airlifting livestock out of the area, said Jonas Jeitziner, a local official in Wiler, as a few sheep scrambled out of a container lowered from a helicopter. Rescue teams have been looking for a 64-year-old man missing since the landslide. Local authorities suspended the search on Thursday afternoon, saying the debris mounds were too unstable for now, and warning of further rockfalls. Residents have struggled to absorb the scale of destruction caused by the deluge, an event that scientists suspect is a dramatic example of the impact of climate change in the Alps. "I don't want to talk just now. I lost everything yesterday. I hope you understand," said one middle-aged woman from Blatten, declining to give her name as she sat alone disconsolately in front of a church in the neighbouring village of Wiler. Nearby, the road ran along the valley before ending abruptly at the mass of mud and debris now blanketing her own village. A thin cloud of dust hung in the air over the Kleines Nesthorn Mountain where the rockslide occurred while a helicopter buzzed overhead. Werner Bellwald, a 65-year-old cultural studies expert, lost the wooden family house built in 1654 where he lived in Ried, a hamlet next to Blatten also wiped out by the deluge. "You can't tell that there was ever a settlement there," he said. Reuters
