Melting ice and glaciers in the Alps: Mer de Glace, Matterhorn in 2016 and 2017

[izentrop]

Before the year 1000 also the end of the world was predicted.

Except it was based on beliefs and these are serious studies https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal ... e3322.html

[Christophe]

In the same family I ask: the Mer de Glace, the signal, the Montenvers and the Rocher des Mottets:

[Christophe]

An article from ParisMatch (hey yes) on the melting of the glaciers of the Chamonix valley:

https://www.parismatch.com/Actu/Environ ... mort-lente

By Jean-Christophe Rufin, of the French Academy / Photos: Philippe Petit

The helicopter slowly ascends the green gorge. A cover of larches and spruces borders the walls of blond rocks. The mountain is more beautiful than ever under the August sun. Yet this beauty is deceptive. Because, in these places that the vegetation covers today, yesterday extended the Argentière glacier. It is on his now empty bed that the plant carpet grows.

The aircraft continued its ascent and flew over smooth cliffs, freshly cleared by the receding ice. Higher still, we can finally make out the front of the surviving glacier. It is a chaos of seracs tortured by the heat and soiled by the black pebbles of the moraine. We suddenly understand that this sumptuous vision is that of a disaster. The mountain, in general indifference, suffers and dies.

Yet we need the mountains. All of us, even those who fear or flee from them. Because they are the witnesses of the origins of the world and the only means which is given to us to return there. With their rock cascades, their furious blades of ice, their shadows and their mists, the high mountains offer the walker and the mountaineer visions of eternity.

This is why their alteration, before our eyes, sends back a terrible echo: that of our own finitude. Our civilizations knew they were deadly: they now understand that they can drag nature into their downfall.

The media often go to the other side of the world to look for images of climate change. All of this moves us and that's great. The spectacle of these events, however, conceals a danger: that of considering that these realities are distant, that we could stay away from these dramas.

Infographics: CO2 emissions, worrying data

But here, in the five valleys that surround the Mont-Blanc massif, the tragedy is not played out in an exotic setting. Doubt is no longer possible: no place in the world is immune. To take the measure of the phenomenon, one must not remain trapped in the valleys. We have to go up, go into contact with the mountain to feel it. Mountaineering is a privileged way to understand climatic realities. It literally allows you to experience the transformations of the mountain.

Thus, for example, the tragic fate of the Lépiney route to the Trident du Tacul. I had the pleasure of climbing it with my son in the summer of 2016. This beautiful classic route followed a clever path, in a sling around the needle. A tribute to the audacity, imagination and cunning of humans, this path, opened in 1919, seemed to last forever. However, on September 25, 2018, a spectacular landslide swept away the Vire du Trident. I imagine that poor Jacques de Lépiney must have felt the shock even in his grave. He, the Parisian, the ace of rocks at Fontainebleau, the promoter of climbing in sneakers, doubtless thought that this route ensured an eternal celebrity in his name. However, it will have disappeared on the eve of its centenary.

Walter Bonatti, too, was convinced that his name would be written in stone forever. He had signed alone, in August 1955, the first ascent of the vertiginous southwest wall of the Petit Dru. Las, the granite pillar, a monument with colossal dimensions and seemingly absolute solidity, collapsed in June 2005. Bonatti had the painful privilege of surviving his pillar. So goes the Mont-Blanc massif: granite, which is the material of graves, is sometimes more fragile than the human beings it is intended to bury.

(...)

[GuyGadebois]

As for the Matterhorn, the snow layer is extremely thin due to the slope and it has often happened that it is plucked out.

[Christophe]

Italy: part of the Planpincieux glacier threatens to break away

On the Mont-Blanc massif, scientists are very worried: an entire section of the Planpincieux glacier risks being detached on the Italian side. Dozens of residents had to be evacuated, roads are closed near Courmayeur

https://www.bfmtv.com/international/eur ... 70146.html

[Christophe]

Montenvers 1990 vs 2021:

31 years...

These 2 photos taken at the same place bear witness to the slow agony of the Mer de Glace, the first photo was taken in 1, the second, a few days ago.

There is now, in the same place, more than 100m of vertical drop and more than 500 steps to reach the glacier, whereas 31 years ago, he was right there, at the exit of the gondola.

Besides, do you know that in 1988 the gondola was built a little further downstream to replace the cable car because the glacier was regaining volume and hitting the counterweights?

Since then, it has only decreased ....

mer_glace_1990_2021.jpg (213.39 KiB) Viewed 2668 times

[GuyGadeboisTheBack]

The faking of the photo is very well done. You bastards of ecologists!

[ABC2019]

the retreat of the glaciers began in the middle of the 2th century, long before COXNUMX began to rise seriously, marking the end of the Little Ice Age.

During the PAG, glacial floods were calamities covering villages and fields with thick ice against which nothing could be done except prayers and processions ....

[sen-no-sen]

the retreat of the glaciers began in the middle of the 2th century, long before COXNUMX began to rise seriously, marking the end of the Little Ice Age.

During the PAG, glacial floods were calamities covering villages and fields with thick ice against which nothing could be done except prayers and processions ....

This data is not incompatible with the RCA.

[Christophe]

the retreat of the glaciers began in the middle of the 2th century, long before COXNUMX began to rise seriously, marking the end of the Little Ice Age.

During the PAG, glacial floods were calamities covering villages and fields with thick ice against which nothing could be done except prayers and processions ....

Blablbal ... yes it's true, I even have personal photos that show it!

SO WHAT? SO WHAT ? The population doubled in the 1th century, going from 2 to XNUMX billion!

And you know that in physics 2 QUANTITIES CAN CUMULATE TO OBTAIN THE SAME EFFECT and that the 2nd effect is not "excused" by the 1st which existed before it!

Head of knots (and I remain polite) !!