Drone search resumes on Italian glacier after avalanche
Glaciers in Europe’s Alps are becoming more unstable and dangerous as rising temperatures linked to climate change are reawakening what were long seen as dormant, almost fossilised sheets of ice.
Italy has been baking in an early summer heatwave and attention had been focused on the impact of drought on crops on the fertile Po Valley.
Further north in the Dolomites, tragedy struck on Sunday when a glacier collapsed on the Marmolada, which at more than 3,300 metres is the highest peak in the mountain range, killing at least seven people. Rescue teams resumed the search on Tuesday for 13 climbers who were still missing almost two days.
After rain hampered the search Monday, sunny weather on Tuesday allowed helicopters to bring more rescue teams up to the site on the Marmolada glacier.
The terrain is still so unstable that rescue crews were staying off to the side and using drones to try to find any survivors while helicopters searched overhead, some using equipment to detect cellular pings. Two rescuers remained on site overnight, and were joined by more rescuers Tuesday morning.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said the disaster was linked to environmental factors.
“This summer 2022 risks being the perfect storm for glaciers,” said Giovanni Baccolo, an environmental scientist and glaciologist at Milan-Bicocca University, noting a lack of winter snow and a ferociously hot start to summer.
“Nobody could have expected a glacier like the Marmolada to react like this,” he told Reuters. “It is a kind of climatic fossil, glaciers like the Marmolada are considered ‘placid’, they are expected to just retreat.”
Rising average temperatures have caused the Marmolada glacier, like many others around the world, to shrink steadily over recent decades.
Temperatures on the normally freezing Marmolada touched 10 degrees Celsius (50 Fahrenheit) on Saturday, Veneto regional governor Luca Zaia said at the weekend.
A huge mass of ice collapsed close to Punta Rocca, on the route usually used by hikers and climbers to reach the summit, the Alpine rescue unit said.
“This is the first such accident in the history of the mountain,” said Gino Comelli, who was helping to coordinate rescue efforts.
“High elevation glaciers such as the Marmolada are often steep and relying on cold temperatures below zero degrees Celsius to keep them stable,” said Poul Christoffersen, professor in Glaciology at the University of Cambridge.
“But climate change means more and more meltwater, which releases heat that warms up the ice if the water re-freezes, or even worse: lifting up the glacier from the rock below and causing a sudden unstable collapse,” he added.
Baccolo said those intrepid hikers heading into the mountains to escape the summer heat should be careful about where they venture. Hikers in the Dolomites in northern Italy said they were frightened after the glacier collapsed.
“The invitation I want to make to those who go to the high mountains this summer is to use much more caution,” he said. “The problem is that it may no longer be enough to read the signs from the glacier that have been read so far.”
Italy is in the midst of an early summer heatwave, coupled with the worst drought in northern Italy in 70 years. Experts say there was unusually little snowfall during the winter, exposing the glaciers of the Italian Alps more to the summer heat and melt.
“We are thus in the worst conditions for a detachment of this kind, when there’s so much heat and so much water running at the base,” said Renato Colucci from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the state-run Council for National Research, or CNR. “We aren’t yet able to understand if it was a deep or superficial detachment, but the size of it seems very big, judging from the preliminary images and information received.”
The CNR has estimated that the Marmolada glacier could disappear entirely in the next 25-30 years if current climatic trends continue, given that it lost 30% of its volume and 22% of its area from 2004-2015. (Agencies)