Melting glaciers threaten to wipe out European villages - is the steep cost to protect them worth it ?

 

In a small village in Switzerland's beautiful Loetschental valley, Matthias Bellwald walks down the main street and is greeted every few steps by locals who smile or offer a handshake or friendly word.

  by Imogen Foulkes Geneva correspondent

 

Mr Bellwald is a mayor, but this isn't his village. Two months ago his home, three miles away in Blatten, was wiped off the map when part of the mountain and glacier collapsed into the valley.

The village's 300 residents had been evacuated days earlier, after geologists warned that the mountain was increasingly unstable. But they lost their homes, their church, their hotels and their farms.

Lukas Kalbermatten also lost the hotel that had been in his family for three generations."The feeling of the village, all the small alleys through the houses, the church, the memories you had when you played there as a child… all this is gone."

Blatten's residents were evacuated days before the disaster

Today, he is living in borrowed accommodation in the village of Wiler. Mr Bellwald has a temporary office there too, where he is supervising the massive clean-up operation - and the rebuild.

The good news is, he believes the site can be cleared by 2028, with the first new houses ready by 2029. But it comes with a hefty pricetag.

Rebuilding Blatten is estimated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps as much as $1 million (USD) per resident.

Voluntary contributions from the public quickly raised millions of Swiss francs to help those who had lost their homes. The federal government and the canton promised financial support too. But some in Switzerland are asking: is it worth it?

 Houses were destroyed after a large part of Blatten was buried under masses of ice, mud, and rock

 

Though the disaster shocked Switzerland, some two thirds of the country is mountainous, and climate scientists warn that the glaciers and the permafrost – the glue that holds the mountains together – are thawing as the global temperature increases, making landslides more likely. Protecting areas will be costly.

Switzerland spends almost $500m a year on protective structures, but a report carried out in 2007 for the Swiss parliament suggested real protection against natural hazards could cost six times that.

Is that a worthwhile investment? Or should the country - and residents - really consider the painful option of abandoning some of their villages?

The day the earth shook

The Alps are an integral part of Swiss identity. Each valley, like the Loetschental, has its own culture.

Mr Kalbermatten used to take pride in showing hotel guests the ancient wooden houses in Blatten. Sometimes he taught them a few words of Leetschär, the local dialect.

Losing Blatten, and the prospect of losing others like it, has made many Swiss ask themselves how many of those alpine traditions could disappear.

'I'll never forget it. The earth shook.' Fernando Lehner recalls the day of the landslide

Today, Blatten lies under millions of cubic metres of rock, mud, and ice. Above it, the mountain remains unstable.

When they were first evacuated, Blatten's residents, knowing their houses had stood there for centuries, believed it was a purely precautionary measure. They would be home again soon, they thought.

Fernando Lehner, a retired businessman, says no one expected the scale of the disaster. "We knew there would be a landslide that day… But it was just unbelievable. I would never have imagined that it would come down so quickly.

"And that explosion, when the glacier and landslide came down into the valley, I'll never forget it. The earth shook."

Landslides are 'more unpredictable'

The people of Blatten, keen to get their homes back as soon as possible, don't want to talk about climate change. They point out that the Alps are always dangerous, and describe the disaster as a once in a millennium event.

But climate scientists say global warming is making alpine life more risky.

Matthias Huss, a glaciologist with Zurich's Federal Institute of Technology, as well as glacier monitoring group Glamos, argues that climate change was a factor in the Blatten disaster.

"The thawing of permafrost at very high elevation led to the collapse of the summit," he explains.

Glaciologist Matthias Huss argues that climate change was a factor in the Blatten disaster

"This mountain summit crashed down onto the glacier… and also the glacier retreat led to the fact that the glacier stabilised the mountain less efficiently than before. So climate change was involved at every angle."

Geological changes unrelated to climate change also played a role, he concedes - but he points out that glaciers and permafrost are key stabilising factors across the alps.

His team at Glamos has monitored a record shrinkage of the glaciers over the past few years. And average alpine temperatures are increasing.

In the days before the mountain crashed down, Switzerland's zero-degree threshold – the altitude at which the temperature reaches freezing point – rose above 5,000 metres, higher than any mountain in the country.

"It is not the very first time that we're seeing big landslides in the Alps," says Mr Huss. "I think what should be worrying us is that these events are becoming more frequent, but also more unpredictable."

Blatten's residents lost their homes, church and farms: living below a mountain, as many Swiss do, looks increasingly precarious

A study from November 2024 by the Swiss Federal Research Institute, which reviewed three decades of literature, concurred that climate change was "rapidly altering high mountain environments, including changing the frequency, dynamic behavior, location, and magnitude of alpine mass movements", although quantifying the exact impact of climate change was "difficult".

More villages, more evacuations

Graubünden is the largest holiday region in Switzerland, and is popular with skiers and hikers for its untouched nature, alpine views and pretty villages.

The Winter Olympics was hosted here twice - in the upmarket resort of St Moritz - while the town of Davos hosts world leaders for the World Economic Forum each year.

One village in Graubünden has a different story to tell.

Brienz was evacuated more than two years ago because of signs of dangerous instability in the mountain above.

Its residents have still not been able to return, and in July heavy rain across Switzerland led geologists to warn a landslide appeared imminent.

Average alpine temperatures are increasing, say scientists. Meanwhile glaciers are shrinking

Elsewhere in Switzerland, above the resort of Kandersteg, in the Bernese Oberland region, a rockface has become unstable, threatening the village. Now residents have an evacuation plan.

There too, heavy rain this summer raised the alarm, and some hiking trails up to Oeschinen Lake, a popular tourist attraction, were closed.

Some disasters have claimed lives. In 2017, a massive rockslide came down close to the village of Bondo, killing eight hikers.

Bondo has since been rebuilt, and refortified, at a cost of $64 million. As far back as 2003, the village of Pontresina spent millions on a protective dam to shore up the thawing permafrost in the mountain above.

Not every alpine village is at risk, but the apparent unpredictability is causing huge concern.

The debate around relocation

Blatten, like all Swiss mountain villages, was risk mapped and monitored; that's why its 300 residents were evacuated. Now, questions are being asked about the future of other villages too.

In the aftermath of the disaster, there was a huge outpouring of sympathy. But the possible price tag of rebuilding it also came with doubts.

An editorial in the influential Neue Zürcher Zeitung questioned Switzerland's traditional - and constitutional - wealth distribution model, which takes tax revenue from urban centres like Zurich to support remote mountain communities.

The article described Swiss politicians as being "caught in an empathy trap", adding that "because such incidents are becoming more frequent due to climate change, they are shaking people's willingness to pay for the myth of the Alps, which shapes the nation's identity."

It suggested people living in risky areas of the Alps should consider relocation.

 

Preserving the alpine villages is expensive. And Neue Zürcher Zeitung was not the first to question the cost of saving every alpine community, but its tone angered some.

While three quarters of Swiss live in urban areas, many have strong family connections to the mountains. Switzerland may be a wealthy, highly developed, high-tech country now, but its history is rural, marked by poverty and harsh living conditions. Famine in the 19th century caused waves of emigration.

Mr Kalbermatten explains that the word "heimat" is hugely important in Switzerland. "Heimat is when you close your eyes and you think about what you did as a child, the place you lived as a child.

"It's a much bigger word than home."

Ask a Swiss person living for decades in Zurich or Geneva, or even New York, where their heimat is, and for many, the answer will be the village they were born in.

For Mr Kalbermatten and his sister and brothers, who live in cities, heimat is the valley where people speak Leetschär, the dialect they all still dream in.

 

The fear is that if these valleys become depopulated, other aspects of unique mountain culture could be lost too - like the Tschäggättä, traditional wooden masks, unique to the Loetschental valley.

Their origins are mysterious, possibly pagan. Every February, local young men wear them, along with animal skins, and run through the streets.

Mr Kalbermatten points to the example of some areas of northern Italy where this loss of culture has happened. "[Now] there are only abandoned villages, empty houses, and wolves.

"Do we want that?"

Lukas Kalbermatten believes the site can be cleared by 2028, with Blatten's first new houses ready by 2029.

For many, the answer is no: An opinion poll from research institute, Sotomo, asked 2,790 people what they most cherished about their country. The most common answer? Our beautiful alpine landscape, and our stability.

But the poll did not ask what price they were prepared to pay.

Trying to tame a mountain

Boris Previsic, the director of the University of Lucerne's Institute for the Culture of the Alps, says that many Swiss, at least in the cities, had begun to believe they had tamed the alpine environment.

Switzerland's railways, tunnels, cable cars and high alpine passes are masterpieces of engineering, connecting alpine communities. But now, in part because of climate change, he suggests, that confidence is gone.

"The human induced geology is too strong compared to human beings," he argues.

"In Switzerland, we thought we could do everything with infrastructure. Now I think we are at ground zero concerning infrastructure."

Boris Previsic says that many Swiss, at least in the cities, had begun to believe they had tamed the alpine environment

The village of Blatten had stood for centuries. "When you are in a village which has existed already for 800 years, you should feel safe. That is what is so shocking."

In his view, it is time to fight against these villages dying out. "To fight means we have to be more prepared," he explains. "But we have to be more flexible. We have always also to consider evacuation."

At the end of the day, he adds, "you cannot hold back the whole mountain".

In the village of Wiler, Mr Previsic's point is greeted with a weary smile. "The mountain always decides," agrees Mr Bellwald.

"We know that they are dangerous. We love the mountains, we don't hate them because of that. Our grandfathers lived with them. Our fathers lived with them. And our children will also live with them."

Helicopters carry debris from the disaster site at Blatten. Even the military is involved in the operation.

At lunchtime in the local restaurant in Wiler, the tables are filled with clean-up teams, engineers and helicopter crew. The Blatten recovery operation is in full swing.

At one table, a man from one of Switzerland's biggest insurance companies sits alone. Every half hour, he is joined by someone, an elderly couple, a middle aged man, a young woman. He buys each a drink, and carefully notes down the details of their lost homes.

Outside, along the valley's winding roads, lorries and bulldozers trundle up to the disaster site. Overhead, helicopters carry large chunks of debris. Even the military is involved.

Sebastian Neuhaus commands the Swiss army's disaster relief readiness battalion, and says they must press on despite the scale of the task. "We have to," he says. "There are 300 life histories buried down there."

The abiding feeling is one of stubborn determination to carry on. "If we see someone from Blatten, we hug each other," says Mr Kalbermatten.

"Sometimes we say, 'it's nice, you're still here.' And that's the most important thing, we are all still here."

Lead image: The village of Blatten after the disaster. Credit: EPA / Shutterstock

Mount Fuji snowless for longest time on record after sweltering Japan summer

 

Mount Fuji on 10 August 2024. The Japanese mountain has experienced the longest time on record without snow. Photograph: Newscom/Alamy

 

 As of 29 October, the iconic mountain was still without snow, marking the longest period since records began 130 years ago.

 

Japan’s Mount Fuji remained snowless on Tuesday, marking the latest date that its slopes have been bare since records began 130 years ago, the country’s weather agency said.

The volcano’s snowcap begins forming on 2 October on average, and last year snow was first detected there on 5 October.

 

But because of warm weather, this year no snowfall had yet been observed on Japan’s highest mountain, said Yutaka Katsuta, a forecaster at Kofu Local Meteorological Office.

 

That marked the latest date since comparative data became available in 1894, he said, beating the previous record of 26 October – which had been recorded twice, in 1955 and 2016.

“Temperatures were high this summer, and these high temperatures continued into September, deterring cold air” which brings snow, Katsuta told the AFP news agency.

He said climate change might have a degree of impact on the delay in the snowcap’s formation.

The summit of Mt Fuji in Japan. Photograph: Newscom/Alamy

 

Japan’s summer this year was the joint hottest on record – equalling the level seen in 2023 – as extreme heatwaves fuelled by climate change engulfed many parts of the globe.

Mount Fuji is covered in snow for most of the year, but during the July-September hiking season more than 220,000 visitors trudge up its steep, rocky slopes. Many climb through the night to see the sunrise from the 3,776-metre summit.

Fewer climbers tackled Mount Fuji this year, however, after Japanese authorities introduced an entry fee and a daily cap on numbers to fight overtourism.

The symmetrical mountain has been immortalised in countless artworks, including Hokusai’s “Great Wave”.

It last erupted about 300 years ago.

 

Melting glaciers force Switzerland and Italy to redraw part of Alpine border. Two countries agree to modifications beneath Matterhorn peak, one of Europe’s highest summits

The Matterhorn straddles Switzerland’s Zermatt region and Italy’s Aosta valley. Photograph: Ascent/PKS Media Inc/Getty Images

 

Switzerland and Italy have redrawn a border that traverses an Alpine peak as melting glaciers shift the historically defined frontier.

The two countries agreed to the modifications beneath the Matterhorn, one of the highest mountains in Europe, which straddles Switzerland’s Zermatt region and Italy’s Aosta valley.

Glaciers in Europe, the world’s fastest-warming continent, are retreating at an accelerated pace because of human-caused climate breakdown.

“Significant sections of the border are defined by the watershed or ridge lines of glaciers, firn or perpetual snow,” the Swiss government said in a statement cited by Bloomberg. “These formations are changing due to the melting of glaciers.”

 The famed Zermatt ski resort is affected by the change, with the two countries agreeing to modify the border around the landmarks of Testa Grigia, Plateau Rosa, Rifugio Carrel and Gobba di Rollin based on their economic interests, Bloomberg reported.

A joint Italian-Swiss commission agreed to the changes in May 2023. Switzerland officially approved the treaty on Friday, but Italy still needs to sign.

The changes come after a disagreement between the two countries over the peak’s territory that lasted for years.

Swiss glaciers lost 4% of their volume in 2023, the second-biggest annual decline on record, according to the Swiss Academy of Sciences. The largest decline was 6% in 2022.

Experts have stopped measuring the ice on some Swiss glaciers because there is none left.

The remains of a German mountain climber who disappeared while crossing a glacier near the Matterhorn nearly 40 years ago were discovered in melting ice in July last year.

 

Experts in Italy said this month that the Marmolada glacier, which is the largest and most symbolic of the Dolomites, could melt completely by 2040 as a result of rising average temperatures.

The collapse of part of the Marmolada killed 11 people in 2022.

The glacier has been measured every year since 1902 and is considered a “natural thermometer” of climate change.

 

(Antarctic Melting) - Disease and hunger soar in Latin America after floods and drought, study finds - theguardian.com

 

Flooding in Porto Alegre was caused by devastating torrents and has killed at least 95 people. Photograph: André Penner/AP

 

Hunger and disease are rising in Latin America after a year of record heat, floods and drought, a report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has shown.

The continent, which is trapped between the freakishly hot Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, probably suffered tens of thousands of climate-related deaths in 2023, at least $21bn (£17bn) of economic damage and “the greatest calorific loss” of any region, the study found.

The climate chaos, caused by a combination of human-driven global heating and a natural El Niño effect, is continuing with devastating floods in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, which have killed at least 95 people and deluged swathes of farmland after the world’s hottest April in human history.

Global heat records have now been broken for 11 months in a row, causing death and destruction across many parts of the planet. Latin America and the Caribbean have experienced some of the worst effects.

In a summary of last year’s toll in this region, the WMO said disasters and climate change, along with socioeconomic shocks, are the main drivers of acute food insecurity, which affects 13.8 million people.

 

Acapulco in Mexico had a category 5 hurricane last year, the first ever to make landfall on the Pacific coast. Photograph: David Guzmán/EPA

 

As the climate warms, diseases are spreading across a greater area. The WMO noted that more than 3m cases of dengue fever were reported in the first seven months of 2023, breaking the previous annual record for the region. Uruguay experienced its first cases of chikungunya and Chile widened alerts about the Aedes aegypti mosquito vector.

There were an average of 36,695 heat-related excess deaths each year in the region in the first two decades of this century. Last year’s toll has not yet been calculated, but it is likely to exceed the average given the record temperatures and prolonged heatwaves in many areas.

Mexico had a record high of 51.4C on 29 August, and many areas sweltered in a prolonged heatwave. By the end of the year, 76% of Mexico was experiencing some degree of drought. In October Acapulco was hit by the first ever category 5 hurricane to make landfall on the Pacific coastline. Hurricane Otis killed at least 48 people, damaged 80% of the city’s hotels and left damages calculated at $12bn.

Other areas of Central and South America endured unusually fierce heat and prolonged drought. The Panama Canal had 41% less rainfall than normal, causing difficulties for one of the most important conduits of world trade.

Brazil, the biggest country in Latin America, experienced record winter heat in excess of 41C and severe droughts in the Amazon rainforest, where the Rio Negro recorded its lowest level in more than 120 years of observations, fires raged around Manaus and more than 100 baiji river dolphins died in the hot, shallow, polluted waters of Lake Tefé.

The south of Brazil has repeatedly suffered deadly flooding. At least 65 people died in São Paulo in February 2023 after torrential rains and landslides. Another 48 were killed and 20,000 displaced in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in September after 300mm of rain fell in 24 hours and now the same southern state is deluged once again. Streets have turned to rivers in Porto Alegre, the capital, forcing the international airport to close while the football pitch of the Arena do Grêmio resembles a lake.

 

 In Lake Tefé, Brazil, river dolphins died in hot, shallow and polluted waters. Photograph: Bruno Kelly/Reuters

 

Last year, floods also took lives, disrupted business or ruined crops in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru and Bolivia.

Combined with drought, this has hurt agricultural production in one of the world’s most important food production regions. Wheat production in Argentina fell 30% below the five-year average, and a similar loss is expected in the harvest of the grain in the Brazilian state of Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul. Some of these losses have been offset by record maize production in other parts of Brazil, but food prices are rising. Overall, Latin America has suffered significant calorific losses, the report said. In countries that are also experiencing political and economic problems, such as Venezuela, Haiti and parts of Colombia, this is creating a food crisis.

The costs in human lives, lost food production and economic damage are expected to rise for as long as humans continue to burn gas, oil, coal and trees, which emit heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.

“Sadly, this is probably only the beginning,” said Prof José Marengo, the lead author of the WMO report and director of the Brazil National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters. “Extreme events are becoming more frequent and the period of return is becoming shorter.”

 

 

 

Environmental row over ‘last chance tourism’ in Canada’s melting Arctic

 

Link to https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/08/environmental-row-last-chance-tourism-canada-melting-arctic-pond-inlet

Slowing ocean current caused by melting Antarctic ice could have drastic climate impact, study says

 The Southern Ocean overturning circulation has ebbed 30% since the 90s, CSIRO scientist claims, leading to higher sea levels and changing weather

 

 

Melting ice in Antarctica has affected a key global ocean current, research suggests. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

A major global deep ocean current has slowed down by approximately 30% since the 1990s as a result of melting Antarctic ice, which could have critical consequences for Earth’s climate patterns and sea levels, new research suggests.

Known as the Southern Ocean overturning circulation, the global circulation system plays a key role in influencing the Earth’s climate, including rainfall and warming patterns. It also determines how much heat and carbon dioxide the oceans store.

 Donna Lu  @donnadlu Theguardian.com

Scientists warn that its slowdown could have drastic impacts, including increasing sea levels, altering weather patterns and depriving marine ecosystems of vital nutrients.

“Changes in the overturning circulation are a big deal,” said the study’s co-author, Dr Steve Rintoul, an oceanographer and expert on the Southern Ocean at the Australian government’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

“It’s something that is a concern because it touches on so many aspects of the Earth, including climate, sea level, and marine life.”

The finding comes months after modelling, which Rintoul was involved in, that predicted a 40% slowdown in the circulation by 2050.

“The model projections of rapid change in the deep ocean circulation in response to melting of Antarctic ice might, if anything, have been conservative,” Rintoul said. “We’re seeing changes have already happened in the ocean that were not projected to happen until a few decades from now.”

The overturning circulation originates in the cold and dense waters that plunge down deep off Antarctica’s continental shelf and spread to ocean basins globally. It brings oxygen to the deep ocean and returns nutrients to the surface ocean.

 

“What’s driven the slowing is the fact that that dense shelf water is not as dense as it used to be because it’s not as salty as it used to be,” Rintoul said.

The melting of Antarctic glacial ice, the researchers found, has resulted in additional freshwater, increasing buoyancy.

The study looked specifically at changes in overturning circulation in the Australian Antarctic basin, but the researchers believe a “circumpolar slowdown” is occurring.

“The Australian Antarctic basin is the best ventilated of all the deep basins in the sense that it gets more … oxygen-rich water getting to the the bottom,” Rintoul said. “The signal in that basin might provide a kind of early warning of changes that might happen around Antarctica.”

Dr Ariaan Purich of Monash University, who was not involved in the research, said the Australian Antarctic basin was downstream of the region in Antarctica experiencing the greatest melt of ice shelves and loss of land ice. “In that sense, it makes it an important region to study to see these meltwater impacts on the ocean circulation.”

Purich described the paper as significant for providing observational evidence for the slowing of large-scale ocean overturning as a result of the melting Antarctic ice sheet.“We’re now seeing lots of lines of evidence that this melt water isn’t only increasing sea levels – it’s affecting the climate system in lots of different ways,” Purich said.,

“This is pretty confronting. These are big changes that are happening in Antarctica that can affect our global climate.”

 

Between 1994 and 2017, there was a net slowdown in the circulation by 0.8 sverdrups per decade, the study found. One sverdrup is a flow rate equivalent to 1 million cubic metres per second.

The researchers found a temporary increase in the overturning circulation between 2009 and 2017, as a result of increased sea ice formation. “That was enough to compensate for the melt from glacial melt for a few years,” Rintoul said.

“We expect in the longer term that while there will be ups and downs related to sea ice formation, the overall trend is that Antarctica is losing more ice, is melting more, and that will gradually slow down this overturning circulation.

“Unless we act soon we will commit ourselves to changes that we’d really rather avoid,” he said. “We need to act to reduce emissions and we need to do everything we can as fast as we can.”

The study, whose first author is Kathryn Gunn of the CSIRO and the University of Southampton, was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.