Latest news with #SwissAlps
Yahoo
9 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.'
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- General
- The Guardian
‘As we explored, we noticed this huge cow': Jennifer Newitt's best phone picture
It was the last day of Jennifer Newitt's holiday in the Swiss Alps, and she and her husband were hankering after one more excursion before their flight home to the US. High above Wengen, the village they were staying in, they noticed the Grindelwald–Männlichen mountain gondola cableway. Despite pouring rain, sunshine was forecast for later in the day, so they decided to give it a go. 'The rain stopped shortly after we arrived at the small cable car station, and we began the 15-minute walk to the summit. Because of the conditions, we had the mountain to ourselves for a while. As we explored, we noticed this huge cow.' The pair were enchanted by the scene; the cow sat, unmoving, just staring at the cars going by. Newitt believes the animal is probably a Simmental or Swiss Fleckvieh. 'We wondered if this was the usual spot for this particular cow to sit, or if the cows fought over it.' Newitt is a high school biology teacher and took up photography a couple of years ago as a hobby. She says this image, made on her iPhone 14 Pro, is the most satisfying photo she's taken to date. 'I love the way your eyes are first drawn to the large, warmly coloured cow, then to the cable cars as you work out what the cow is looking at, and then to the gorgeous, moody clouds hanging over the valley. My husband had a jigsaw puzzle made of this image because he knows how much I love it.'
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
A collapsing glacier destroyed a Swiss village. Is climate change to blame?
A small village in the Swiss Alps has been engulfed by ice, mud, and rock in a rare natural disaster that points to an uncertain future as unstable mountainous glaciers can break apart in destructive avalanches. A swirling and volatile combination of climate change effects, fragile natural environments and human development contribute to the danger, leaving experts concerned about what the future may hold. While similar avalanches occasionally happen in the Alps, one hasn't impacted a populated region for over a hundred years. "It's critical to realize that we now have left the space of historical precedence and entered an era where we face new hazards from locations that have never been a problem in the past and where protection may be technically hardly possible or financially unfeasible," Christian Huggel, a professor of environment and climate at the University of Zurich, told USA TODAY via email. Studying this kind of disaster isn't easy, partly because such "ice-rock-debris" avalanches often occur in isolated areas so gathering good data is a challenge. "Statistics are difficult here but it seems that the past 5-10 years have brought more such critical situations in the Swiss Alps than in the earlier past. We should definitely prepare for more of the kind in the future," Huggel said. As much as 90% of Blatten, Switzerland, is now engulfed by ice, mud, and rock after what scientists suspect is a dramatic display of the impact of climate change on mountain communities. "We've lost our village," Matthias Bellwald, the mayor of Blatten told a press conference after the slide. "The village is under rubble." A video shared widely on social media showed the dramatic moment when the glacier partially collapsed, creating a huge cloud that covered part of the mountain as rock and debris came cascading down towards the village. More: Swiss glacier collapses, burying village: Video, satellites show Blatten before and after While recently rare in the Alps, "events of the dimension of the 'ice-rock-debris avalanche' in Blatten are known from and studied in regions like the Himalayas or Alaska over the past several decades," Huggel told USA TODAY via email. A similar event happened in April 2024, but did not affect population centers, said Huggel. But the destruction of large parts of a village (with 300 inhabitants) "has in fact no historical precedence in the 21st and 20th century." Before that, there was a landslide in Goldau in 1806 and one in Elm in 1881, where more than 400 and 100 people lost their lives, respectively, Huggel said. "Higher average annual temperatures may lead to more glaciers, especially in steep terrain, becoming 'unstuck' from their beds, or mountain permafrost, which can keep mountain slopes frozen together, thawing and making such slopes less stable," said Bruce Raup, a senior associate scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Raup told USA TODAY that globally speaking, such events happen in steeper, younger mountain ranges such as the European Alps and the Himalaya where erosional processes are more active. Risk is higher if there are people or infrastructure near potential mass movements, or downstream where a blocked stream could lead to flooding. ABC News reports that an uptick in glacier melt had been observed at Birch Glacier, and emergency managers ordered hundreds of villagers to evacuate. Huggel called what happened next "a complex interaction of various processes of rock slope instability." According to Raup, "the event was a massive rock avalanche/landslide falling onto a glacier that then collapsed and went down together with the rock mass." While various factors were at play in Blatten, it was known that local permafrost had been affected by warmer temperatures in the Alps. The loss of permafrost can negatively affect the stability of the mountain rock, which is why climate change had likely played a part in the deluge, Huggel said. (This story has been updated to add new information.) Contributing: Reuters This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Swiss glacier collapse caused a disaster. Is climate change to blame?
New York Times
16 hours ago
- Climate
- New York Times
Corrections: May 31, 2025
An article on Friday about a landslide in the Swiss Alps on Wednesday misstated the distance between Blatten and Brienz, where a landslide narrowly missed in 2023, in Switzerland. They are about 140 miles apart, not 60. Another village of the same name, Brienz, is about 60 miles from Blatten. An article on May 18 about Rubik's Cube misspelled the surname of an actor. He is Jim Carrey, not Carey. Errors are corrected during the press run whenever possible, so some errors noted here may not have appeared in all editions. To contact the newsroom regarding correction requests, please email nytnews@ To share feedback, please visit Comments on opinion articles may be emailed to letters@ For newspaper delivery questions: 1-800-NYTIMES (1-800-698-4637) or email customercare@
RNZ News
2 days ago
- Climate
- RNZ News
'I lost everything': Swiss residents in shock after glacier debris buries village
By Dave Graham , Reuters The small village of Blatten and its surroundings in the Bietschhorn mountain of the Swiss Alps, Switzerland on May 29, 2025 after it was destroyed the previous day by a landslide after part of the huge Birch Glacier collapsed and swallowed up by the river Lonza. Photo: AFP/Maxar Technologies Residents struggled to absorb the scale of devastation caused by a huge slab of glacier that buried most of their picturesque Swiss village , in what scientists suspect is a dramatic example of climate change's impact on the Alps. A deluge of millions of cubic metres of ice, mud and rock crashed down a mountain on Wednesday (local time), engulfing the village of Blatten and the few houses that remained were later flooded. Its 300 residents had already been evacuated earlier in May after part of the mountain behind the Birch Glacier began to crumble. Rescue teams with search dogs and thermal drone scans have continued looking for a missing 64-year-old man but have found nothing. Local authorities suspended the search on Thursday afternoon (local time), saying the debris mounds were too unstable for now and warned of further rockfalls. EN IMAGES - Voici l'effondrement du glacier Birch sur le village de Blatten (VS), dans le Lötschental. Il ne reste pratiquement plus rien du village. (RTS) With the Swiss army closely monitoring the situation, flooding worsened during the day as vast mounds of debris almost two kilometres across clogged the path of the River Lonza, causing a huge lake to form amid the wreckage and raising fears that the morass could dislodge. Water levels have been rising by 80 centimetres an hour from the blocked river and melting glacier ice, Stephane Ganzer, head of the security division for the Valais canton, told reporters. Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter is returning early from high-level talks in Ireland and will visit the site on Friday, her office said. "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. The small village of Blatten, in the Bietschhorn mountain of the Swiss Alps, destroyed by a landslide after part of the huge Birch Glacier collapsed and swallowed up by the river Lonza the day before, in Blatten on May 29, 2025. Photo: AFP/FABRICE COFFRINI 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 told Reuters. "Things happened there that no one here thought were possible." The worst scenario would be that a wave of debris bursts the nearby Ferden Dam, Valais canton official Ganzer said. He added that the chances of this further mudslide were currently unlikely, noting that the dam had been emptied as a precaution so it could act as a buffer zone. Local authorities said that the buildings in Blatten which had emerged intact from the landslide are now flooded and that some residents of nearby villages had been evacuated. The army said around 50 personnel as well as water pumps, diggers and other heavy equipment were on standby to provide relief when it was safe. 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. Asked how he felt about the future, he said, gazing towards the plain of mud: "Right now, the shock is so profound that one can't think about it yet." The catastrophe has revived concern about the impact of rising temperatures on Alpine permafrost where thawing has loosened some rock structures, creating new mountain hazards. For years, the Birch Glacier has been creeping down the mountainside, pressured by shifting debris near the summit. Matthias Huss, head of Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland, pointed to the likely influence of climate change in loosening the rock mass among the permafrost, which triggered the collapse. "Unexpected things happen at places that we have not seen for hundreds of years, most probably due to climate change," he told Reuters. - Reuters
