by Rhone Glacier, Switzerland (AP) – Drip, Drip. Drop, drop.
That is the sound of water that seeps from a sun -baked and slushy Swiss glacier that monitors geosters on signs of continuous withdrawal through the majestic masses of ice under the heat of global warming.
In recent years, Glaciologists such as Matthias Huss of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and others have been known as dramatic measures to protect glaciers such as the Rhone Glacier, feeding the river with the same name that runs through Switzerland and France.
One of those desperate steps includes the use of gigantic sheets to cover the ice as blankets to slow the melt.
Switzerland is the Glacier capital of Continental Europe, with around 1,400 that offer drinking water, irrigation for agricultural land in many parts of Europe, including the French wine country and hydropower that generates the majority of the country’s electricity.
The number has decreased. The Alpine Country has already lost a maximum of 1,000 small glaciers, and the larger run is increasingly risk.
Drill in glaciers to follow what is happening inside
This month, Huss organized the Associated Press for a visit to the vast glacier, while performing his first monitoring mission while the summer temperatures speed up the thaw. Under normal circumstances, glaciers can regenerate in winter, but climate change threatens.
“I always say that glaciers are the ambassadors of climate change because they can spread this message in a very understandable way,” Huss said. “They also cause good feelings because glaciers are beautiful. We know them from our vacation.”
The enormous vastness of blue, gray and white ice is littered with cracks and grooves, and Huss says that his teams have seen a new phenomenon in Switzerland at the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Group: holes that appear under the surface that sometimes broadens so that the ice folds up.
Huss uses a mortar to drill in the ice and sends icy chips up as if of a flowing fountain. It is part of a process in which stakes and poles are used to follow ice loss by melting.
A better understanding of glaciersmelt
Huss monitors not only melt at the top, but also of the base of glaciers.
“Normally glaciers melts from the top because of the warm air, because of their radiation from the sun. But in recent years we realized at different locations that there is a substantive melt of the bottom,” Huss said. “If there are some channels in the ice causing air, this can excavate large holes under the ice.”
The Alps were covered with ice 20,000 years ago, but no longer. It is the same story elsewhere. Experts have warned that about two -thirds of the glaciers of the world disappear towards the end of this century
Huss says that only people can help them save.
“It is difficult to save this very glacier, because it can only be saved – or at least can be withdrawn to withdraw more slowly – by bringing down CO2 emissions,” he said. “But everyone can only contribute to reducing the CO2 emissions as far as possible.”
“This will not help this glacier immediately, but it will help all glaciers from the long distance,” he added. “This is the most important thing we have to think of when we see this melting ice and see this big refuge – that it is time to act now.”
A glacier takes place and a village is destroyed
The worries about the glaciers of Switzerland have recently been intensified after the southwestern village of Blatten, hidden near the Birch Glacier, was largely destroyed in May by a slider of rock and glacier ice cream. The village was evacuated for the slide, which covered dozens of houses and buildings and left only a few roofs visible.
An overview of data showed that the birch glacier was a rarity because it improves while most glaciers have been withdrawn. And the advance had increased in recent years, to the point that it flowed by approximately 10 meters (about 30 feet) per day shortly before the collapse – a speed that is called ‘completely untenable’.
Huss said that the landslide was activated by rocks that stacked themselves on the glacier, although he also called Birch’s Opherhane a ‘precursor’.
The most important collection meal of the birch glacier collapse, says Huss, that “unexpected things happen.”
“If you ask me, like three weeks ago, nobody would have guessed that the whole village will be destroyed,” he said. “I think this is the most important lesson that needs to be learned, that we must be prepared.”
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AP journalist Jamey Keaten in Geneva has contributed to this report.
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