While most people love a good animal story, scientists believe there's more going on than just the proliferation of smartphones with built-in cameras.
The ice caps which cover our planet's poles are key to understanding global weather patterns and changing climate. But we still don't have a complete understanding of how they work, and what goes on beneath the frozen surface.
A group led by researchers at the UK's University of Durham used radar to glimpse beneath the coast of East Antarctica. In a new study, they announced their findings: Ancient riverbeds beneath Antarctica control the behavior of the ice sheet above them.
Reconstructing ancient landscapes
It is crucial to understand how much, and how quickly, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is going to melt as temperatures continue to rise. It's the largest of Antarctica's three ice sheets, and it contains enough water to raise the sea level by over 50 meters.
The behavior of an ice sheet depends on more than just surface conditions. The landmass hidden beneath the ice impacts how quickly it melts and where it collapses. To get an idea of what that hidden landscape looks like, researchers analyzed a series of radar scans covering 3,500km of East Antarctica.
The scans found what was once a coastal plain formed by fluvial erosion. Between 80 million years ago, when Antarctica divorced Australia, and 34 million years ago when it became covered in ice, rivers flowed across East Antarctica and into the sea. Those rivers carved out a smooth, flat floodplain all along the coast. Breaking up the plain are deep narrow troughs in the rock. These plains covered about 40% of the area they scanned.
This find confirms previous, fragmentary evidence for a very flat, even plain beneath the icy expanse.
Hopeful findings
This is good news for those of us who enjoy not being underwater. Computer programs modeling future climate behavior now have more data to work on. Before, as the study's lead author, Dr. Guy Paxton, said in a Durham press release, "The landscape hidden beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is one of the most mysterious not just on Earth, but on any terrestrial planet in the solar system."
Understanding the terrain beneath the ice makes it much easier to understand how and where the ice will move. “This in turn will help make it easier to predict how the East Antarctic Ice Sheet could affect sea levels.”
More than that, however, the ancient fluvial plains may be slowing down the melt. The study suggests that the flat plains may be acting as barriers to ice flow. Fast-moving glaciers pass through the deep channels, but the bulk of the ice, atop the plains, is moving much more slowly.
Ultimately (as they always do), researchers stressed the need for more investigation. Further studies would involve drilling all the way through the ice and taking samples of the rock below. So look forward to that.
Last month, a large rockfall swept down the south face of the Aiguille du Midi in the Mont Blanc massif of the French Alps. It has now been estimated that approximately 523 cubic meters broke away, the equivalent of 15 shipping containers of rock.
The scar from the missing rock is clearly visible, and a pile of fresh debris now sits at the base. In the days before and since the fall, climbers have reported cracking sounds and traces of runoff on the south face, suggesting that the recent slide won't be the last.
On July 3, one user on the UK Climbing forum wrote, “Several teams have reported signs of an impending collapse: unusual noises (creaking, cracking, etc.), vibrations coming from the wall, and the sound of water flowing without any visible water in the Kohlmann/Clair de Lune area (extreme right hand side) of the south face of the Aiguille du Midi. A 12-meter block fell down a few weeks ago. Probably best to avoid in this hot weather!”
The 1st june rockfall at Aiguille du Midi south face was 523 m3!
Cracking noises and runoff traces above the scar (small red circle) indicate thawing permafrost and that the upper slab could fall as well!
Be careful when passing through this area!
Data/analysis: Xavier Cailhol
— Melaine Le Roy (@subfossilguy.bsky.social) 9 July 2025 at 13:24
Classic climbing area under threat
The Aiguille du Midi (3,842m) is a popular climbing area. Its south face features classic granite routes such as the Rebuffat–Baquet and the Contamine. These climbs are close to the top of the Aiguille cable car and popular early in the summer.
But in recent years, the face has become much less predictable. Warmer summers have melted the permafrost that once glued the mountain together, leading to a steady but unpredictable increase in rockfall.
Since the early 2010s, climbers and guides have reported more severe rockfalls across the Alps. To name just a few: In 2018, a huge chunk of rock from the south face of the Trident du Tacul near the Grand Capucin came crashing down. In 2023, large rockfalls took place on the Aiguille du Midi and Mount Pelvoux. Then in 2024, part of the west face of the Dru, below the Bonatti Pillar, fell.
Rock avalanche deposit from 1st June below Aiguille du Midi south face!
Xavier Cailhol (05 July) and Philippe Batoux (1st June)
Look how much snow disappeared in June!pic.twitter.com/z6yfp2G4rE
— Melaine Le Roy (@subfossilguy) July 5, 2025
Some of these events have destroyed climbing routes entirely or forced the establishment of new lines. The Aiguille du Midi itself has seen smaller rockfalls almost every year, but the June 2025 collapse is one of the largest.
As the Alps continue to warm, events like this are becoming part of the landscape. For climbers and visitors, it’s a reminder of how fragile the high alpine environment is.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency funds scientific and technological development across the United States and its territories. It also funds research and maintains facilities in Antarctica.
Well, it did do that, anyway. The Trump administration's cuts have slowed operations in Antarctica to a crawl. Scientists warn that climate research conducted there is vitally urgent. Despite this, the NSF is preparing for an operational retreat from Antarctica.
End of U.S. Antarctic dominance
For decades, the United States has been one of the most prominent forces on the southernmost continent. With three large Antarctic bases, a network of research vessels, and the South Pole Highway, which runs across the Ross Ice Shelf, the United States maintains a significant amount of Antarctic infrastructure.
However, that infrastructure has been in decline, especially in the wake of COVID-19. Last summer, the 30-year charter on the Antarctic Research Support Vessel Laurence M. Gould expired. Citing budgetary constraints, the NSF did not renew the charter, leaving only one functioning vessel.
The aging Antarctic stations also experienced cuts. Trump recently canceled the construction budget for the McMurdo Sound base. McMurdo Station has been in operation since 1956. From its position on Ross Island, it acts as a logistical and transport hub for the rest of Antarctica. However, its facilities are desperately in need of repairs and upgrades. Last year, one of the dorms was demolished, and now it will not be able to be rebuilt.
Not just the facilities but the research itself is imperiled. Last year, the NSF announced that it wouldn't fund new projects for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 field seasons. Only projects that secured earlier funding are proceeding, for now.
Meanwhile, other International powers remain interested in Antarctic research. Both China and Russia have announced new bases in the region, and China, France, and Chile will deploy new icebreakers there.
Antarctica can't wait
As the effects of anthropogenic climate change become more dramatic, Antarctica is the canary in the coal mine.
In an interview with New Zealand's Newsroom, Gary Wilson, president of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, expressed his concerns.
The challenge, he said, is that "Antarctica can’t wait." Global temperature change and sea level rise are urgent problems, and Antarctica is central to stopping this. “Time is just not on our side."
This isn't just overzealous budget cuts; it's part of an intentional policy opposing climate research. It remains to be seen what, if any, research American scientists will be able to conduct in Antarctica in the coming years.
Earlier this week, a massive rockfall hit the West Face of the Dru, near Mont Blanc. The slide would have been considered normal in summer or fall but not in mid-January. Luckily, no climbers were on the wall at the time.
Major rockfalls on the West and South Faces of Dru have been a constant cause of concern since the turn of the millennium. One in 2005 destroyed most of the Bonatti Pillar, one of the most admired routes on the peak.
The situation has only worsened since then. Two years ago, a major rockfall affected the access couloir to the normal route on the South Face. Another big one occurred last summer.
Unusual in winter
Such events are most common in the hottest months of the year, as the permafrost gluing the rock together melts, making the surface unstable. But the slide recorded by several climbers in the area, including well-known photographer Seb Montaz, occurred in midwinter when days are short and temperatures typically remain low.
Glaciologists and climate experts are constantly studying how conditions are evolving around Chamonix. A local alpinist gave us his take on the situation.
Professional guide and Piolet d'Or winner Hellias Millerioux admits the rock collapse was unexpected because it happened during a cold winter day. Otherwise, he says, he wasn't surprised.
"The mountains are changing fast," he said. "Rockfalls and collapses are how the mountains respond to changing conditions, and we will see more and more [of them]."
Millerioux: We'll see more
"As guides and alpinists, we have to adapt," he said. "We need to study conditions carefully and decide wisely what, how, and when to climb."
Millerioux explained that the routes on the Mont Blanc massif, including the normal lines, are in a delicate state. Careful monitoring is essential.
"For example," he said, "I climbed the Walker Spur last summer during a period of good but cold weather. The following week, temperatures rose, and the 0º level went up to 5,000m. In such conditions, venturing onto the Walker would have been extremely exposed to rockfall."
Millerioux admits he's no expert, but his experience tells him that most rockfalls happen on hot days, in fall after a hot summer, and after periods of heavy rain.
"Especially in the granite, the permafrost filling the cracks melts with the high temperatures and the rain, leaving the faces prone to collapse," he noted. "And yet, you must be prepared for the unexpected. The West Face [of the Dru] was supposed to be okay these days, and yet there was rockfall."
Millerioux is not optimistic about the future, especially in places like Chamonix, where the difference in altitude between the town at 1,000m and the highest points (Mont Blanc is 4,809m) is similar to that between Base Camp and the summit on Nanga Parbat.
"I have seen huge rock avalanches while on expeditions in the Himalaya, and sometimes I am concerned because a town is right below the mountains. After the 2015 Langtang earthquake, a major rockslide completely buried the village below. I don't want to think of something like that happening here."
More unstable after each slide
Yet, climbing teams keep scouting the legendary Dru, one of the most iconic peaks in the Mont Blanc massive. As far as Millerioux knows, the North Face of the Dru, one of the six classical North Faces of the Alps, is in good condition. As for the West Face, it is hard to tell from the images which parts and routes may have been affected. The risk is that the latest rockfall may have increased the instability of a face already weakened by previous slides.
The last significant climb in the region happened right at the end of last year. Between December 25, 2024, and Jan 1, 2025, a military team from Chamonix opened Petit Pont, a 1,000m route (ED, M5, 6a, A3) that goes right up the sections of the face where big rockfalls have left the face a lighter shade of grey.
Ice loss in the Arctic has long been a sign of climate change, but an Arctic entirely free of ice has still seemed a long way off.
Not so, according to a recent study, which found that the Arctic could see its first ice-free day before the end of the decade.
The term “ice-free” is approximate since small patches of ice will cling to Greenland and the northern edges of Canada long after the rest of the Arctic has melted. Researchers measure the amount of frozen Arctic in “sea ice extent,” meaning areas with at least 15 percent of sea ice concentration. The Arctic is considered ice-free when there are less than one million square kilometers of sea ice.
It is hard to predict when exactly this will happen. Models consistently underestimate ice loss, and global weather patterns affect conditions at the Poles. But this most recent study found it could be as early as 2027.
A powerful symbol
Combining 11 different climate models, researchers Celine Heuze and Alexandra Jahn examined over 300 scenarios for the future of ice in the Arctic. Nearly one-tenth of them showed the first ice-free day occurring within the next 10 years, with the earliest prediction only a few years away. Even conservative models estimate the Arctic will be free of ice within 30 years.
“"The first ice-free day in the Arctic won't change things dramatically," Jahn said, but it would be a powerful symbol of our ability to affect the planet.
Ice loss in general, however, will have very dramatic effects. Due to the albedo effect, by which dark water in the Arctic absorbs the sun's rays, the warming sea will accelerate climate change. It will also cause more extreme weather events.
The first ice-free day, the models show, won’t just come from a warm summer but a warm winter and fall as well. If ice levels reach a low point during winter, climate scientists will know an ice-free day will likely follow the next summer. It won’t be a single day, either. Models suggest the first ice-free period will last between 11 and 53 days.
Is it preventable?
There were also scenarios where things went better for the ice. Changes in emissions can slow down melting, preventing an ice-free day within the 21st century. However, conditions in the Arctic vary wildly from year to year, and especially cold or warm years are difficult to predict, as a number of explorers discovered to their dismay.
According to researchers, the good news is that “if we could keep warming below the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 °C of global warming, ice-free days could potentially still be avoided.”
The Sphinx snow patch on Braeriach in the Scottish Highlands has melted for the fourth year in a row. This is the only 11th time the famous snow patch has melted since the 1700s.
Braeriach is the third-highest mountain in the Cairngorms. The Sphinx sits within a coire -- a glacial hollow from the last Ice Age. Because of this and its presence for hundreds of years, many consider it a remnant of the last Ice Age.
Over the previous 20 years, Iain Cameron -- Scotland’s foremost snow patch expert -- has been monitoring the patch. He says it is a “barometer for climate change.”
This is the first time the patch has melted for the fourth year in a row in over 200 years. The Scottish Mountaineering Club recorded the first full melt in 1933. Over the next seven decades, it disappeared only occasionally. Since 2003, it has vanished eight times.
A sad day today. The Sphinx will melt in the early hours of tomorrow morning, meaning that’s the fourth consecutive year it has done so.
This patch was once considered permanent. It has now melted completely since the 1700s in the following years:
1933
1959
1996
2003
2006
2017… pic.twitter.com/yV5T9yulA4— Iain Cameron (@theiaincameron) October 3, 2024
Cameron blames the scarcity of western-facing storms from the Atlantic. "There’s not as much snow falling in winter," he explains. "Precipitation is mostly rain.”
He visited the ice patch last Thursday. It measured a mere 0.5 meters wide and was gone by the following morning. In snowier decades, the patch was up to 50 meters in diameter.
"I feel both saddened and alarmed," he says. "I'm so used to seeing them year after year that it's hard to see them vanish so often. It’s like visiting an elderly relative."
In his 2021 book, The Vanishing Ice, Cameron explores elusive snow patches around the UK. He believes they might soon be a thing of the past.
Parts of the 744km-long Swiss-Italian border have always followed the lines that nature has drawn. Now, climate change has redrawn those lines, forcing both governments to redefine those shared sections that depend on the boundaries of glaciers. As these boundaries change, the border must also.
"Significant sections of the border are defined by the watershed or the ridgelines of glaciers, firn, or perpetual snow," the Swiss government said recently. "These formations are changing due to the melting of glaciers."
Both countries are currently considering the proposed revisions. An agreement is expected soon.
Affected areas
Part of the affected area lies below the Matterhorn, close to popular ski resorts. There, the border rejigging will affect the Plateau Rosa Glacier, the Carrel Refuge, Gobba di Rollin, Testa Grigia, and the Zermatt ski resort, where thousands of hikers and skiers cross freely between the two countries every year.
According to Euronews, border adjustments are frequent and generally settled by comparing surveyor data from both countries without getting politicians involved.
It's no secret that summers are getting hotter, and there is less snow. Swiss glaciers are shrinking so fast that it is unlikely they can be saved. Between 2021 and 2023, eastern and southern Switzerland lost 10% of its glaciers, losing as much ice as it did between 1960 and 1990.
Italy's glaciers are equally afflicted. Dosdè in the Italian Alps has retreated by seven meters since last year.
Grim discoveries
The disappearance of glaciers has also caused the bodies of several long-dead mountaineers to surface. Even a plane that crashed in 1968 and was buried has now emerged from the Aletsch Glacier, according to the BBC.
Some veteran hikers, including Duncan Porter below, have shared their photos of glaciers on social media then and now.
Apart from melting glaciers, several climbing routes have suffered massive rockfalls. Some routes have entirely disappeared.
Heavy rains hit Nepal between Thursday and Saturday, causing havoc in several areas of the country, particularly around Kathmandu, where the Bagmati River has breached its banks.
The Home Ministry stated that 192 people are confirmed dead. An additional 30 are missing and 4,500 have needed rescue. Landslides and flooded rivers have blocked several major highways.
Airport remains open
Tourists planning to visit Nepal in the next few days may need patience. Airports remain open but with some restrictions, so international flights may be delayed or rescheduled.
Climbers and trekkers may also face difficulties, such as washed-out roads and delayed helicopter flights. Many helicopters are currently busy rescuing stranded locals. In the Kathmandu Valley alone, roads were blocked or damaged in 57 places, the Rising Nepal Daily reported today. Would-be trekkers should ask their outfitters for updated information about the state of the trails.
Sun returns...
The good news is the rains stopped on Sunday. Yousef Al-Nassar of Kuwait sent these two videos of Namche Bazaar on Saturday after 48 hours of nonstop rain and in yesterday's sunshine.
Like many other climbers in the area, Al-Nassar left town today for the mountains. He intends to reach base camp at Kyajo Ri (6,186m) on the Tibetan border tomorrow.
"I hope I don't find a disastrous situation when I get there," he said.
Al-Nassar told ExplorersWeb that he will climb on his own and attempt a new route up the south face of the mountain.
A large boulder that came loose on the upper side of the face triggered the slide. A temperature inversion caused the dust cloud to spread throughout the valley, where it lingered for hours. A celiometer (cloud-measuring device) and webcams at Kleine Scheidegg registered the disturbance, according to @meteoschweiz.
Such events happen in the Berner Oberland from time to time due to thawing permafrost. Until recent years, ice and snow within and between the rocks largely glued together the unstable slopes. As this "glue" melts in the higher temperatures, the rocks become even more unstable.
Bigger than usual
"Such rockfalls are not uncommon," Kathrin Naegeli, media spokeswoman for Jungfrau Railways, told Berneroberlaender.ch. "The last time this happened was at the beginning of August."
Naegeli confirmed that the slide did not affect the Jungfrau Railway, which runs through the tunnel carved inside the Eiger and Monch mountains, or the Eiger Trail along the foot of the mountain. No reports indicate whether the rockfall changed any climbing routes.
While rockfalls are common here, the size of this one was remarkable.
"Rock avalanches are increasing, and events of this size are [unusual]," glaciologist Melaine Le Roi told ExplorersWeb. "Observations around the Alps show permafrost degradation is the main trigger for high-elevation rock avalanches."
The expert noted that the North face of Eiger and the detachment zone are above the lowest limit of permafrost. Read more about permafrost thawing and its effects on alpine faces here.
The Eiger North Face had another major rockfall event just one year ago.
Thame, a village near Everest and the birthplace of legendary Sherpa climbers such as Apa Sherpa and Kami Rita Sherpa, was flooded earlier today. Locals suspect a glacial lake burst its banks and fear further floods.
Thame was flooded at 1:25 pm, Nepal time, after a sudden surge of the Bhotekoshi River. The Bhotekoshi is a tributary of the Dudhkoshi River, the main watercourse of the Khumbu Valley which is directly fed by the Khumbu glacier.
Village destroyed
About 45 families live permanently in Thame. According to preliminary reports, the flood has severely damaged 50% of the village and the remaining houses are uninhabitable. Authorities report one missing person.
The exact origin of the flash flood is unconfirmed, but locals suspect a GLOF, a glacial lake outburst flood.
"There are a couple of glaciers about a two-hour walk above the valley, but because of harsh conditions, it is currently impossible to investigate the source of the outburst," Laxman Adhikari, Ward Chair of Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality Four told the Himalayan Times.
Neighbors fear further floods
Local authorities have warned those living in villages near the banks of the Dudhkoshi River to stay alert. Meanwhile, members of the community are asking for helicopters to scout the lakes up the valley to try and anticipate any further floods.
Among them is Pasang Tsering Sherpa, a local entrepreneur, who considers it essential to find out where outbursts might occur: "If [the flood] comes from the right side of Kongde Ri, it will be very dangerous."
Increasing temperatures are creating huge glacial lakes. These threaten to overflow or, worse, burst because of avalanches from nearby peaks or sudden downpours during monsoon season.
The rains are hitting Nepal hard this summer. Several areas, including some parts of the Kathmandu Valley, were also flooded some weeks ago.
Again this year, huge rockfalls are changing the shape of some of the Alps' most iconic peaks. The latest major slides hit the Dru and the Aiguille du Midi above Chamonix, close to the cable car.
Eddy Veillet, a guard at the Plan de l'Aiguille mountain hut, filmed rocks tumbling down the north face of the Aiguille du Midi. Thanks to the cable car that runs from the center of Chamonix to the summit, it's the most visited peak in the region.
Earlier this week, another major rockfall took place on the west face of the Dru, below the Bonatti Pillar.
This is the second big rockfall this summer on the Dru. The first took place on July 16. Check the video below:
The summer began with plenty of snow on the peaks, but conditions radically changed when a torrent of rain fell at the end of June. It flooded many mountain towns in France, Switzerland, and Italy. High temperatures and dry weather, beginning in the second half of July, followed.
Rockfall is not new, but climate change has increased the frequency and size of these events as the permafrost that glues the rocky faces together melts. Last summer's high temperatures prompted several incidents throughout the Alps.
Check updated posts about the conditions around the Chamonix-area mountains here.
In an occasion both momentous and deeply disturbing, scientists downgraded a glacier in the Venezuelan Andes to just an "ice field." This change in status of the Humboldt Glacier — also called La Corona — makes Venezuela the planet's first contemporary nation to lose all its glaciers.
“Other countries lost their glaciers several decades ago after the end of the Little Ice Age, but Venezuela is arguably the first one to lose them in modern times,” Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist and weather historian, told The Guardian. He added that Indonesia, Mexico, and Slovenia are likely next up for the dubious honor.
While the ice field formally known as the Humboldt Glacier is still two hectares in area, being a glacier isn't about size — or at least not size alone.
"Glaciologists often use a criteria of 0.1 sq km [10 hectares] as a common definition, but any ice mass above that size still has to deform under its own weight [to count as a glacier]," glaciologists James Kirkham and Miriam Jackson explained to the BBC.
And that's definitely no longer happening to La Corona.
Last man standing
The Humboldt Glacier was somewhat of the last man standing in Venezuela. Located above 5,000m in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida range, La Corona kept company with five other glaciers. By 2011, all five of its companions had already vanished.
That prompted officials and scientists to keep a close eye on the Humboldt. The Venezuelan government even recently installed a thermal blanket over what was left of it in an attempt to halt or reverse the melting process. There was some optimism that the Humboldt might make it to 2030 or beyond.
El Niño
But a nasty El Niño combined with some political turmoil in Venezuela dashed those hopes. By the time the turmoil settled and scientists could resume monitoring the Humboldt, its inherent glacier-ness had vanished.
“In the Andean area of Venezuela, there have been some months with monthly anomalies of 3-4˚C above the 1991-2020 average,” Herrera noted.
Mark Maslin, an earth scientist at University College London, says that the melting of small glaciers such as the Humboldt won't contribute to sea-level rise. But such occurrences represent an ongoing trend. And there are wider implications as well.
"The loss of [the Humboldt Glacier] marks the loss of much more than the ice itself, it also marks the loss of the many ecosystem services that glaciers provide, from unique microbial habitats to environments of significant cultural value," said Caroline Clason, a glaciologist at Durham University.
"That Venezuela has now lost all its glaciers really symbolizes the changes we can expect to see across our global cryosphere under continued climate change."
This morning, a huge avalanche on Manaslu reached Lake Birendra, just southeast of the mountain. It caused the lake to overflow, swelling the water of the Budhigandaki River, which runs toward Samagaon village.
No victims have been reported. However, local authorities have issued urgent warnings to populations down the valley because of the risk of flash floods. Trekkers planning to hike to the lake or along the Budhigandaki River (sometimes called Buri Gandaki) must be especially cautious.
"Initial assessments suggest no immediate threat of further damage, despite the increased water levels damaging a wooden bridge spanning the river," police told The Himalayan Times.
Warning for trekkers
Details remain sketchy, but the lake's location suggests that the slide didn't fall down the mountain's normal route but down its south or southeast flanks. The only expedition planned on Manaslu this spring, a two-person team, received its climbing permit just two days ago. We have no information on them or their objective, but it's unlikely they had time to reach the mountain yet.
However, the Manaslu area in the Gorkha region is a popular spot for trekkers. They will need updated information on the water level of the lake and the Budhigandaki River.
There are those who contend time isn’t real, while most of us spend our lives locked in its regimental advance.
Both those groups received unlikely validation from a recent survey item that could affect timekeeping worldwide.
Climate change is altering time by slowing down Earth’s rotation, researchers found. The key factor is the rate of polar ice melt. And if the warming effect continues at its current pace, the universal timing standard — UTC — will require a tweak by the end of the decade.
“Future Earth orientation shows that UTC as now defined will require a negative discontinuity by 2029,” the study, published in the journal Nature, said. “Global warming is already affecting global timekeeping.”
Nature research paper: A global timekeeping problem postponed by global warming https://t.co/5DU1v0VDy9
— nature (@Nature) March 28, 2024
In short, climate change is slowing down time. And even though the study found things should only slow down by one second every few years, it could wreak “unprecedented” havoc — in the world of computer programming. (Sound familiar?)
Wrinkle in time
Duncan Agnew, a University of California, San Diego researcher and the study’s lead author, described the problem with an assortment of angular velocities. As the earth's 5,400˚ C solid metal core rotates, it affects how the other layers behave. The core has cooled at a constant rate since 1972, the researchers pointed out. As the material cools, it still squishes and squelches around — just more slowly, sort of like refrigerated molasses or grape jelly.
As the magma loses angular velocity, the rest of the layers speed up. This would theoretically speed up time — unless something else slowed it down.
Enter Earth’s polar regions, where spiking temperatures are decimating ice reserves. Observations from NASA show Antarctica has lost 2,500 gigatons of ice mass since 2002 (a gigaton is a billion metric tons).
It’s induced a gigantic weight redistribution, as water drains toward the equator.
"When the ice melts, the water spreads out over the whole ocean; this increases the moment of inertia, which slows the Earth down," Agnew told Radio France.
Officials charged with keeping world time already saw this dissonance coming; they just thought we would reach it three years earlier than Agnew now proposes. And it actually postpones any required response to a possible computer problem that echoes a famous panic from decades ago.
Time warp
Timekeeping took a major step forward in 1967, when the cesium-133 atomic clock became the standard for measuring the second in the International System of Units. Before then, time was astronomical — measured only by Earth’s rotation and relative position in the solar system.
But since atomic clocks use quartz oscillators tuned to electron movement inside the nuclei of atoms, they’re far more accurate. In fact, we’ve added 27 “leap” seconds to UTC since the advent of the system.
Now, though, we’re in uncharted territory — the land of the “negative leap second,” where we face removing time from the world clock for the first time ever. Consensus says we’ll need the negative leap second in 2029; Agnew’s research says 2026.
Either way, it could spell trouble for computer software, which generally only accounts for adding leap seconds, not subtracting them.
"This has never happened before, and poses a major challenge to making sure that all parts of the global timing infrastructure show the same time,” Agnew said, per the BBC.
So give your Y2K shelter keys a jingle and start buying all the toilet paper you can. Or just set your watch back a tick. Or not. Time's not real anyway — is it?
Did you know that “thrawn” is the ability to make the most of whatever you’ve got?
Did you know that Beira, the Queen of Winter, is the mother of all Scottish gods and goddesses?
You’ve had to pause for reflection twice within the first 10 seconds of the film if, like me, you didn’t.
Don’t expect that effect to go away. Lesley McKenna and Lauren MacCallum may not be the Queens of Winter — but they’re pro snowboarders and they've got a lot to say. Contemplative narration dovetails here with an ardent style of riding that's hard to find on piste.
Would you ride that? Yeah, me neither — but then again, I don’t have thrawn.
Stubborn energy
“Stubborn is definitely part of it,” MacCallum says. “A transformative energy, a powerful energy, aye — very needed in these times. The struggle — the thrawness.”
This Patagonia joint is all about the athletes’ deep-rooted backgrounds and contagious personalities. You don’t have to watch much of it to get a strong infusion of both qualities — but you should, because they’re both colorful and compelling.
As much as Thrawn is the story of two athletes, it’s also the story of their town. Aviemore, Scotland is situated in Cairngorms National Park, and it’s a focal point of the country’s ski scene. McKenna knows it well — it’s where her father worked as the first professional ski patroller in the United Kingdom.
Don’t miss wipeouts, sketch moments, and highlights from the Olympian’s long career in the bindings. And hang on for a statement about the future of snow sports in Scotland. MacCallum delivers a snarling, steadfast, aspirational message on the climate change reshaping the country’s famous highlands.
Noting statistics on snowfall decline, she says, “I’m sick and tired of complaining about it in the pub, basically. It brings a sense of unease. We’re gonna have to roll up our sleeves and do it for our goddamn selves.”
Whether or not you lace your boots and cinch your bindings with thrawn each day, you’ve probably felt its call. Watch this short docu to get a booster shot of the mojo that makes these Scottish snowhounds tick.
Thawing permafrost on the granite spires of Patagonia is triggering the same dangerous rockfall that has plagued other mountain ranges. Most recently, some of the pitches on the East Face of Fitz Roy have changed. The objective risk of climbing has also increased.
From difficult to Russian Roulette
A fallen 20-meter slab has affected the first pitch of the Royal Flush route on Fitz Roy (also known as Cerro Chalten), Patagonia Vertical reported. The five bolts and the former belay station are now out of reach. The only way up now is a chimney (6c A0) with several unstable rocks inside it.
"One of them has a guillotine-like edge," Patagonia Vertical warned. "It is not possible to climb it as a chimney because of the blocks...but it could be free-climbed." The site also said that a climbing team will have to clean that section to make it safe again.
It also posted a video of a big rock slide to demonstrate how the rising temperatures have made conditions on Patagonian faces much more unstable.
Royal Flush now even harder
Royal Flush is a high-difficulty, 1,200m route up the center of the East Face of Fitz Roy. It was opened in 1995 by Kurt Albert, Bernd Arnold, Jorg Gershel and Lutz Richter. They free-climbed all except a mixed section and the crux.
Tommy Caldwell managed the first complete free climb in 2005, but he couldn't touch the summit due to dangerous ice conditions near the top. Check this video of Nico Favresse climbing the route:
Studies on the impact of rising temperatures and in particular, climate change in Patagonia have abounded since the 2000s. All note how dramatically the area's glaciers have shrunk and how thawing of the ice "glue" holding the peaks together has made them much more fragile.
Check this video for American climber Tyler Karow's on-site explanation. He shot the sequence last year at the Boeing Ledge on the Central Tower of Paine.
Herders in Mongolia are undergoing an unusually harsh winter — or at least, one that used to be unusually harsh.
“Dzud” winters feature a punishing combination of extreme cold, heavy snow, and high winds. While Mongolian winters are cold in general, these frigid seasons are exceptional. They’re also uniquely threatening to the country’s herders and livestock.
If sheep and goats can’t reach grass beneath heaps of snow and sheets of ice, even the woolliest animals are less likely to survive the extreme temperatures.
To make matters worse, summer droughts often precede dzuds. These conditions happened last year and are worsening due to climate change, the Yale School of the Environment reported.
The upshot is grim. About 190,000 herder households and 64 million livestock animals are “struggling with inadequate feed, skyrocketing prices and heightened vulnerabilities” this winter, according to United Nations officials in Mongolia.
Reports indicated the most snowfall in 49 years and 668,000 livestock dead.
This February, 90% of the country faced the threat.
Snow the height of a ger
That’s after January snowfall amounted to nearly double the long-term national average — an average which has climbed 40% since 1961. Despite government efforts to clear roads, 13,500 households were snowed in and cut off from basic services, as of early 2024.
“I’ve never seen snow that is equal to the height of a ger in my life,” Tserenbadam G., a nomad in her 70s, told Yale’s e360.
“Extreme cold and windy weather weaken animals and lead to starvation; pregnant livestock miscarry or die. Young animals are at greater risk of death,” the UN reported. “The aftermath destroys the livelihood of many herding households.”
According to Yale, a dzud used to occur about once every 10 years. But these days, they have featured in six of the last 10 Mongolian winters.
The winter of 2023-4 especially bad
This year’s is especially severe. In a “white” dzud, very deep snow cuts off animals from grasses. In an “iron” dzud, a rapid, hard freeze follows a brief thaw, which locks pastures in ice. Both sets of conditions exist this winter.
Combined, the UN and Mongolian Democratic Party have proposed over $6 million in aid funding. Relief measures include road clearing and free feed for livestock. However, herders are concerned the resources will fall short of the need.
UN seeks $6.3 million to combat #dzud in #Mongolia. Approximately 90 per cent of the country is facing a high or extreme dzud risk, imperiling millions of livestock and livelihoods. https://t.co/0BiHKhIqiK
— ReliefWeb (@reliefweb) February 20, 2024
Split between hundreds of thousands of people and millions of animals, the funding would only cover a sack or two of feed per household, herders explained. One sack sustains a sheep for about a week.
And while herders braced for this year’s dzud by slaughtering their weakest animals early, the strategy may further weaken Mongolian rangelands in the long run. Grazing pressure has increased with growing nomad populations, and land fertility is suffering overall.
Mongolia’s Ministry of the Environment and Tourism linked 49 percent of desertification in the country to overgrazing. The rest, officials estimated, is linked to climate change.
Official high-alert conditions will persist until May 15, the World Health Organization advised. Early weather forecasts for March called for more snow accumulation.
For some years now, scientists have warned climate change has doomed Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier, the world's largest. Also known as the Doomsday Glacier, it is melting at an unprecedented rate. Now one scientist has what sounds like a crazy, desperate plan to save it. He wants to draw a giant curtain around it.
The Thwaites has lost over a trillion tonnes of ice since 2020 and accounts for four percent of global sea level rise. If it melted completely, the sea level would rise by almost three meters around the world.
At the moment it forms a barrier between many other glaciers and warming sea water. If it disappeared, these other, semi-protected glaciers would promptly melt as well.
A 100km long, 100m high curtain
Glaciologist and geo-engineer John Moore wants to erect a 100km long, 100m high curtain around the Thwaites. Contrary to what you might think, it's not to shield the ice from sunlight. The bottom of the curtain would anchor to the seafloor, and the top would float in front of it, creating a makeshift wall in the water. This would keep the deep currents of warm water from reaching the glacier, stopping the melting or at least slowing it down.
In 2018, Moore came up with a similar idea, but instead of a curtain, he proposed a giant wall. Now he thinks the curtain is more feasible. It would be easier to install and remove if it caused unexpected problems.
"Any intervention should be something that you can revert if you have second thoughts," Moore told Business Insider.
Moore and a team from the University of Cambridge are creating one-meter prototypes of the curtain and testing it on a small scale in the lab. They will next test it in a river environment.
In its infancy
They are unsure if the project will work and have stressed that their research is only in its infancy. Testing the curtain on an ever-larger scale will show them if it could reverse or slow down the melting of this giant glacier.
The Seabed Curtain Project hopes to launch a ten-meter version in a Norwegian fiord in 2025. The project will cost somewhere between $50 to $100 billion to set up, plus another $1 billion a year for maintenance.
Some of Moore's colleagues have been highly critical of the project. Speaking to Sky News, geoscientist Martin Siegert said the plan was nonsense and that such “ideas are dangerous, illusionary, and distracting.”
Physical geographer Bethan Davies echoed this. She said that building such a curtain in a polar environment would be almost impossible. Others have said even if it works, it will merely slow the inevitable.
Moore admits that this is not a permanent solution, but it is better than just giving up. "We need to do something,” he said.
As the days get hotter across Europe, the Alpine ibex's behavior and daily routines are changing.
A research team from Sardinia has been using GPS trackers to monitor the daily movements of the goats between May and October since 2006. They tracked 47 goats across two national parks and amassed 13 years of data.
Typically, ibex make their way down the mountains during the day to feed at lower altitudes. But this is happening less and less.
Heat more pressing issue than predators
Instead, the goats are often foraging at night, even in areas with high concentrations of nocturnal predators. There is minimal cover in the areas where ibex feed and wolves patrol these areas at night. The ibex seem to have decided that avoiding the heat is more crucial than avoiding predators.
"We expected higher levels of nocturnal activity in Switzerland where wolves [one of the ibex’s main predators] were absent, but we found the opposite. We found that activity is higher in the areas with wolves," co-author Francesca Brivio told The Guardian.
Nocturnal activity brings other risks too. Navigating steep mountain faces is significantly harder in the dark, and the goats are not particularly well-adapted to a nocturnal lifestyle.
"Their movement in the rocky slopes where they live is probably more difficult [at night], which could make the foraging and foraging strategies less efficient," Brivio explained.
Our changing climate is forcing many species to adapt. However, researchers are worried that the ibex are making themselves both more susceptible to predation and less able to feed properly in the dark.
Ibexes are particularly vulnerable because of their low genetic diversity. During the 1800s, numbers dropped dramatically because of hunting. At one point, only 100 wild individuals remained. Hunting bans helped numbers rebound, and there are now tens of thousands of Alpine ibex in Europe.
Until now, no one was sure why the Earth slipped into an extreme ice-age 717 million years ago and stayed that way for 56 million years.
Now researchers in Australia may have solved the mystery.
Using computer modeling, they analyzed how the continents moved over time. They believe that the sudden drop in temperature was due to a decrease in carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon dioxide traps the sun's heat. If the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere plummeted, it could cause the "Snowball Earth" of 700 million years ago.
But what caused carbon dioxide levels to dive so dramatically? And why did it last for 56 million years? Says Lead researcher Adriana Dutkiewicz, “These days, humans are having a large impact on CO2 in the atmosphere. But back in time, there were no humans, and so everything was basically modulated by geological processes.”
They suspected that the changing carbon dioxide levels might be from volcanic activity. Or rather, a lack of it.
The team looked at the movement of the tectonic plates after the breakup of Ronda, the ancient super-continent. The model showed that as the smaller continents shifted away from each other, the length of the mid-ocean ridge changed in length. A second computer model then analyzed the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from the underwater volcanoes along the mid-ocean ridge.
The modeling showed that an all-time low of volcanic carbon dioxide emissions coincided perfectly with the start of this so-called Sturtian ice age. The amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide was approximately half of what it is today. For the next 56 million years, the carbon dioxide remained relatively low.
Said co-author Dietmar Müller, “We think the Sturtian ice age kicked in due to a double whammy: a plate tectonic reorganization [minimized] volcanic degassing, while simultaneously a continental volcanic province in Canada started...consuming atmospheric carbon dioxide.”
Though the models seem to explain that mysteriously long ice age, it is hard to prove. No one knows what the ancient seafloor looked like. “One thing about geology, there are no definite answers," says Dutkiewicz. "But...we can suggest that this was a very likely process.”
What could take down a prehistoric ape the size of a pickup truck? Don’t look at a rugby player, pro wrestler, or even any natural predator.
Just check the weather.
Gigantopithecus blacki was the largest primate that ever lived. “Giganto” stood three meters tall and weighed about three to four times as much as a human at 200-300 kilograms. The ape lived in southeast Asia about two million years ago — until it sharply declined and disappeared.
Giganto’s downfall began about 300,000 years ago, but until now no one could suggest a compelling reason for it. Now, new research points to climate change. It forced dietary adjustments that the huge creatures couldn’t adjust to.
A team led by Kira Westaway of Macquarie University published the recent work in the prestigious journal Nature. Right away, the team’s findings chipped away at a common misconception about Giganto’s extinction.
“It was assumed that the deterioration in forests was the cause of its demise as it couldn’t live in open grasslands,” Westaway told the Guardian. "But our study shows that this [shift to savannah] occurred at about 200,000 [years ago] when G. blacki was already extinct."
Favorite fruits disappeared
Instead, Westaway’s group found that a gentler shift in Giganto’s habitat from deep forests to medium-density savannah triggered the die-off. Climate change seemed to account for the novel landscape.
“We’re getting a very strong wet season and a very strong dry season,” said Westaway.
The upshot: Fruits on which Giganto had grazed freely throughout the year suddenly became scarce during dry periods.
The team investigated the evolving diet of Giganto by examining wear patterns on its teeth and its internal chemical composition. Fallback foods were the focus. What did Giganto eat as its staple foods disappeared?
For comparison, the team looked at teeth from a Chinese orangutan, a similar animal that went extinct later. While the orangutan shifted to leaves and flowers from the forest canopy, the giant ape opted for a paltry backup diet: bark and twigs on the forest floor.
Mobility limited the animal’s foraging range, the team found. Soon, Giganto populations faced challenges, and between 295,000 and 215,000 years ago, they had disappeared.
Thinking of taking the kids to see the Ice Grotto at Chamonix's Mer de Glace this Christmas? Or planning to ski down the Vallée Blanche? Make sure you bring crampons, harness, and ice axe, and that you know how to use them.
La Chamoniarde, Chamonix's organization for mountain safety, regularly updates on alpine conditions near Chamonix. It warns about restricted access to and from the glacier while a new cable car is built.
Tourist hotspot
The Mer de Glace Glacier is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the Chamonix Valley, thanks to its easy access and the presence of a spectacular ice cave. Visitors usually reach it via a combination of the Montenvers trail, a cable car, and some stairways and ladders to the glacier.
In winter, the glacier marks the end of the ski descent of the Vallée Blanche, the 23km-long downhill that starts from the top of the Aiguille du Midi cable car. It is a 2,800m descent from the top of the lift to Chamonix.
Shrinking glacier
Unfortunately, the Mer de Glace has suffered from the devastating effects of climate change. The ice is disappearing at an alarming rate.
For a decade, the old gondola linking the Montenvers train station and the glacier, built in the 1980s, put visitors directly on the ice. Eventually, Chamonix had to add some metal steps to the rocky glacier side, then more every year. In 2021, over 550 steps lay between the end of the gondola and the ice surface.
Old stairway closed
Finally, in November, the gondola lift closed forever. A new cable car leading to a different spot, 600m further up the glacier, will replace it. The ice is supposed to last longer there.
The old stairway is now closed and off-limits. Until the new lift opens next month, the only access to the glacier is by via ferrata (the yellow route on the main image and the green line on the map below). This requires safety lines, helmets, crampons, and ice axes.
What about skiing?
Mainly, it depends on snow conditions. It's ideal to have enough snow to ski down to Chamonix and skip the lift and the train altogether. However, that is not typically the case. Most of the time, skiers end up at the glacier and climb up the stairs to the now non-existent lift.
Since that is no longer an option, the alternative is to head for the Buvette des Mottets and the trails through the woods to town.
However, the lift that conveys skiers from the Vallée Blanche to the Aiguille Du Midi only opens on Dec. 23.
"Even with the lift open, conditions during the first weeks of winter are tough," UIAGM guide Michel Gonzalez told ExplorersWeb. "We only guide a few people, no more than two per guide, and we make sure they are experienced enough.
Have a look at the whole ski run and the arrival at the Mer de Glace and the ice cave.
A Japanese scientist studying thinning sea ice has died when he fell through the ice in Northwest Greenland.
Locals had warned Tetsuhide Yamazaki that ocean currents were fast near Siorapaluk, the world's northernmost village. They said that he should not go this early in the season. Although Yamazaki was experienced, he went. This is the Dark Season in Siorapaluk, and the sun is below the horizon until February, so visibility is poor.
When he didn't return, a search party found a hole where he had fallen through some shuga, or porridge ice, according to ExplorersWeb writer Galya Morrell, who is in touch with the villagers. There was no trace of him.
Despite its remoteness, little Siorapaluk, population about 60, has been a popular destination for Japanese scientists of all stripes for years. That is thanks to the amazing Ikuo Oshima. In 1972, Oshima moved to Siorapaluk from Tokyo after seeing photos of it in a book. He fell in love with the place, married a local woman, and lived the traditional hunting life of that remote Inuit region.
Now a young-looking 76, he is considered the most knowledgeable hunter in the village. His friendliness and willingness to help has drawn other Japanese to Siorapaluk, for briefer periods, to study.
Is society ending due to climate change? The internet says "definitely yes," and "definitely no," and every shade of "maybe."
One group of researchers wanted to peel back a few layers. Climate change does destroy some cultures — but why? And, more pressingly, why do others survive these traumatic fluctuations?
Austria’s Complexity Science Hub performed the peer-reviewed study, sourcing an ambitious database of significant moments in human history. The group pulled data on 150 calamities throughout time periods and regions from Seshat, which aims to catalog “human cultural evolution since the Neolithic.”
The key insight is bad news for many of us around the world: Cohesion is the main ingredient in social survivability, the researchers found.
Rome's declining plague survival
“Inequality is one of history’s greatest villains,” Daniel Hoyer, a co-author of the study and a historian who studies complex systems, told PopSci. “It really leads to and is at the heart of a lot of other issues.”
The team draws the argument that we need a strong capacity for teamwork to meet the huge challenges climate change can cause.
For instance, high volcanic activity in the early centuries AD helped cool temperatures, which led to the epidemic waves that crippled the Roman Empire. The Republic survived the first one, 165 AD’s Antonine Plague of smallpox, through community resilience — even though it lasted for a generation and was far deadlier than COVID-19, according to the Smithsonian.
Emperor Marcus Aurelius reinforced cities and towns that the pestilence cleared out, inviting migrants to work the fields and even promoting the sons of freed slaves to replace felled aristocrats.
But the third century’s Plague of Cyprian tore into a Roman Empire in flux. Civil wars and outsider invasions roiled it, and a seismic shift to Christianity under Emperor Constantine loomed. Rome survived again, but the Plague of Justinian in the sixth century proved too much.
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This likely genetic precursor to the Black Death laid the empire low with death rates soaring to 25-40% in Constantinople, according to The Collector. The Western Roman Empire had collapsed two centuries earlier, and invaders had pillaged Rome itself twice. Emperor Justinian had involved his army in reclaiming lands, but when the population rotted from the inside out, attackers closed in.
Too many Maya, not enough water
General consensus agrees that other factors did contribute to these pandemics, like increasing global trade. So what about other societies that suffered from more direct climatic shifts like droughts, famines, and floods?
The Maya had heavily populated the interior uplands of the Yucatan peninsula by around 750 AD. But seven successive droughts then occurred, and they had virtually disappeared from the area by 1000 AD (when the civilization itself effectively collapsed).
The Maya kept growing and populating, though, throughout the first five major dry spells. Why did they succumb to the last two?
Looks like they were overpopulated, evidence suggests. According to the Harvard Gazette, dense cities of 60,000-100,000 people sucked up water sourced unsustainably from wetlands and forests. The Mayans’ agriculture techniques made the problem worse, and the cyclical droughts finally overcame their ability to survive.
Poor design, the report suggests, made their choked cities unlivable under ecological pressure.
“You need to have social cohesion, you need to have that level of cooperation, to do things that scale — to make reforms, to make adaptations,” Hoyer, the Complexity Science Hub co-author, told PopSci. “Whether that’s divesting from fossil fuels or changing the way that food systems work.”
The climate will kill us, and the mechanism will be greenhouse gas emissions, a new paper promises — albeit, 250 million years from now.
A study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience models an oncoming supercontinent that will prove unsurvivable. Pangea Ultima will cause “conditions rendering the Earth naturally inhospitable to mammals,” the University of Bristol team found.
Pangea Ultima’s formation would produce massive carbon dioxide, doubling the amount in today’s atmosphere. But that’s only one piece of the puzzle. The aging sun will also scorch the planet with 2.5% more wattage than today. And the vast inland areas would experience temperatures too extreme to tolerate.
What would this world look like? Basically, the continents would squish together, as seen on a conventional map. If you were anywhere around latitudes of about 30 degrees, you’d be having a very bad time. Average summer highs would reach a temperature represented by a color that does not exist on the scientists’ maps — which tops out at a burned meat-colored 60˚C.
When the age of mammals ends
Right now, the researchers call 66% of the planet “habitable.” By the year 250,002,023, that number narrows to 8%.
The event would bring a resilient lifeform to its knees. Mammals have inhabited “nearly every terrestrial biome” on earth during about 310 million years of existence, the paper points out. That’s about twice as long as dinosaurs, and we outlived their mass extinction and others. Heavy climatic fluctuations, like multiple ice ages, have also taken place during our tenure.
Interestingly, the researchers found this could be the only thing that mortally threatens mammals during the next several billion years. They even point out that no other factors will even injure the dominance of earth’s most prolific vertebrates.
Human-caused climate change does exist, they acknowledge. But “it is unknown whether or when [mammals] will ever reach a climatic tipping point whereby their ascendancy is threatened.”
At least not until a “runaway” greenhouse effect inevitably takes over in billions of years. In it, “all life will eventually perish.”
Before this physiological Armageddon, it does look like life on the blue planet will experience a pretty wide window of existence. What that might look like is anybody’s guess.
Lead author Alexander Farnsworth teased the possibility of our replacement, but didn’t hazard a guess at what might do it.
We are the dominant species but Earth and its climate decide how long that lasts,” Farnsworth told The Guardian. “What comes after is anyone’s guess. The dominant species could be something completely new.”
Alpinist Robert Jasper reported today that a large rockfall cascaded down the North Face of Eiger. According to Jasper, the historic Ghilini-Piola Direttissima route, and possibly also the new Renaissance route, have been affected.
On the Ghilini-Piola Direttissima, first climbed in 1983 by Rene Ghilini and Michel Piola (6b, A4, 1,400m), a huge rock pillar collapsed at pitch 22. It smashed the entire wall section below, according to Jasper. He did not report any injuries.
As we reported last week, Peter von Kaenel and Silvan Schupbach opened the 30-pitch, 1,220m Renaissance route just last month. They placed no bolts and only left behind eight pitons. This route follows the steep Rote Fluh, near the Ghilini-Piola Direttissima and the Czech Pillar.
Rockfall on the Matterhorn too
Yesterday, Sept. 10, 2023, there was also a big rockfall in plain view on the Matterhorn's South Face, according to Italy's Newsbiella. Local sources confirmed that no one was on that part of the face at noon when it occurred.
The normal route was unaffected. A further rockfall occurred on the Swiss side of Matterhorn, around the Zmutt ridge. Because of the high temperatures and the instability, all guides decided against climbing the mountain with clients, even via the normal route.
As Newsbiella points it out, these rock slides are not surprising, since the temperature has not dipped below freezing even on the summits for many days.
Here is the video on the rockfall on the Matterhorn, recorded by Luciano Canova.
The longest-lasting snow patch in the UK has completely melted for just the 10th time in 300 years. It has been around longer than three centuries, which is when records of the Sphinx patch began.
The Sphinx is located in a sheltered part of the third-highest mountain in Britain, Braeriach Munro in the Cairngorms, Scotland. The patch of snow has now disappeared five times within the last six years.
A famous perennial patch
Until 100 years ago, everyone thought the snow patch was a permanent feature on the mountain. It exists in a coire, a glacial hollow that formed during the last ice age. Even in the warm summer months, it used to stay cool enough to maintain snow.
The first confirmed record of it fully melting was in 1933, then again in 1959. Before this, it is thought to have melted in the 1700s for the first time. It was known as a perennial patch because it lasted for more than two years at a time.
Since 1996, its disappearance has become much more common. Over the last three years, it has fully melted each summer, meaning that it is now classed as a seasonal snow patch.
It is with a heavy heart I report that as of today the Sphinx has gone *again*. What 100 years ago was considered to be a permanent feature of our hills has vanished for the 10th time. Five of these have been since 2017.
A sad day.
— Iain Cameron (@theiaincameron) September 6, 2023
Iain Cameron, a snow expert who monitors the patch, confirmed its 10th disappearance. He said that it is "beyond reasonable doubt" that global warming is the cause of its more frequent melting.
After it disappeared in 2021, he told The Guardian, “What we are seeing from research are smaller and fewer patches of snow. Less snow is falling now in winter than in the 1980s and even the 1990s.”
For those in the UK, it might not be surprising that the snow patch has melted this week. In the last seven days, we have had the hottest day on record this year and set the record for the hottest September ever.
Cameron believes that it will now become a rarity for the Sphinx patch to survive through the year. In 2020, a report by the Cairngorms National Park stated that snow cover has been decreasing on the mountain since 1983. By 2080, there will likely be no snow on the mountain at all.
It's not news that climate change is severely affecting the European Alps, but studies quantifying the economic impact of increasing average temperatures are still scarce. When they are published, the conclusions are scary.
"Without snowmaking, 53% and 98% of the 2,234 ski resorts studied in 28 European countries are projected to be at very high risk for snow supply under global warming of 2 °C and 4 °C, respectively," a new article published in Nature states.
Shorter seasons
So, if average temperatures rise another 4°C, skiing in Europe is essentially over. Of course, there is an "if" in the previous sentence, but every ski-lover in Europe knows that ski seasons are progressively growing shorter. Rain in the middle of winter seems more common, spoiling conditions on the runs. Last year, the beginning of the season was troublesome, not only in southern Europe but also in the most visited ski spots in the Swiss, French, Austrian, and Italian Alps.
As the study explains, the changes are not regular: warming is hitting lower or more southern resorts particularly hard. In such places, snow canyons have become an essential part of the infrastructure, as numerous as ski lifts and snow-cats.
Meanwhile, the resorts' maintenance technicians use their skills and resources. They shovel thick layers of wet snow upside down to get drier layers to the surface before the skiers start gliding down. They snow-farm too, piling up and trying to preserve the remaining snow at the end of the ski season, so they can use it the following winter.
Shooting snow is not enough
Snow guns have become increasingly popular in ski resorts across Europe, even in places where machines were not needed just a few years ago. In some lower or southerly spots, business is entirely dependent on artificially produced snow. The question is how long this method will be sustainable, or even profitable.
The average snow gun is capable of producing snow at nearly 0ºC and some new models are capable of spraying solid snow even at 4ºC. However, their use requires lots of power and water.
"While it represents a modest fraction of the overall carbon footprint of ski tourism, snowmaking is an inherent part of the ski tourism industry and epitomizes some of the key challenges at the nexus between climate change adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development in the mountains, with their high social-ecological vulnerability," the article explains.
A long heat wave in southern and central Europe is having a serious impact on the Alps, affecting some of the most popular spots.
In the Ecrins massif (French Alps), a huge rock slide has buried the trail to the refuge housing climbers for Mount Pelvoux, one of the area's most visited peaks. Further slides and climate change-related issues have forced the closure of three more huts in the last three weeks, glaciologist Melaine Le Roy reported on X (formally Twitter).
Chatelleret Hut closed because of flash floods and Selle Hut had to stop operating because the water source to the hut dried up. Now a rockslide down Celse Nievre Valley has cut access to Pelvoux and Sele huts. You can see the rockslide in the video below.
Be careful on Mont Blanc
In the Chamonix area, conditions have rapidly worsened, La Chamoniard reports. The zero isotherm is currently around 5,000m, meaning snowy ground doesn't ice up during the night, even on the 4,000'ers. This means softer snow, weak snow bridges over hidden crevasses, and unstable terrain on the ridges.
The High Mountain Rescue Group confirmed the dangerous conditions in their latest report, issued on Monday.
Among the worst affected areas is Mont Blanc's normal route. Several crevasse falls have been reported at the Dome du Gouter and a major slide yesterday at 5:30 am down the Col du Gouter (also known as the Bowling Alley) on Mont Blanc's normal route resulted in a rescue.
If the situation doesn't change, soon Mont Blanc will be extremely demanding or not possible, officers warn. "Make inquiries, adapt your choice of activities and outings, and don't hesitate to postpone certain climbs," La Chamoniard suggests.
Yesterday, a new rockslide occurred on the north face of the Aiguille de Midi, between the Frendo Spur and the Mallory route, shocking trekkers at Plan de l'Aiguille. The debris cloud could be seen through the Chamonix valley, Le Dauphine Libere reported.
Trekking also hazardous
Landslides do not only affect alpinists climbing big mountain faces. They also affect trekkers and hikers passing below the peaks. The video below by guide Jaime Escolano shows a rockslide at the Croda Rossa in Italy's Dolomites.
Just seven days ago, I crossed the base of Croda Rossa with friends, passing through the area that would be hit by the rockfall.
Heavy rainfall in India's Himachal Pradesh has caused huge landslides. At least 30 people have died, and the casualty count is increasing.
The strong monsoon has brought huge floods and landslides, destroying several buildings. In Shimla, a Shiva temple came down in the flood waters, killing nine, including three children.
According to local news, it's feared that nearly 50 people might be buried under the debris. Rescue efforts are currently underway.
This is just one of a series of weather-related disasters to strike the Indian Himalaya in recent years.
Cloud burst in Himachal Pradesh | India | heavy rainfall | landslide | #HimachalPradesh #Himachal #HimachalFloods #Uttarakhand #HeavyRain #HeavyRainfall #landslides #floods pic.twitter.com/LDVSDSVDh1
— Mukul Negi (@Mukulnegi009) August 14, 2023
Trying to attract sponsors by wrapping expeditions with awareness-raising campaigns for good causes is a common expedition tactic. Sometimes, it gets out of control.
Such was the case of the team who came up with the idea of justifying a trip to Greenland by bringing a chunk of an iceberg in a fridge all the way back to southern Spain, just to let it melt in the middle of a street.
After a trip to southern Greenland, the organizers shipped a 15,000-kilogram piece of iceberg to Spain in a refrigerated container at -20ºC. The cargo is currently on its way to the Malaga Coast, in southern Spain. And why the fuss?
"So citizens can observe how the iceberg melts down, and thus raise awareness about global warming," one organizer told Cope Radio.
For all the tourists sitting on terraces suffering the effects of withering Spanish heat over gin and tonics, a summer hot enough to melt icebergs will hardly come as a surprise. Calculating the carbon print and energetic cost of the stunt could be actually more surprising. At least, so think Malaga's environmental associations.
Greenwashing
"This is a greenwashing operation organized by Manuel Calvo and supported by Malaga's local government," Malaga's section of Ecologistas en Accion (Spain's biggest association of ecological groups) said.
They criticized the waste of energy and resources, as well as the iceberg-melting plan. "It is like trying to raise awareness against animal mistreatment by organizing a bullfight," they said.
The environmentalists also noted that the organizers have simply justified "a joyride in Greenland" and taken advantage of some young cancer survivors.
The organizer, Manuel Calvo, promoted the trip as a mission in which he would take five former cancer patients between 15 and 17 years old for the experience of a lifetime. Calvo also took his own son and daughter as coaches.
Tourism disguised as a 'mission'
They toured part of Greenland's southern fiords for two weeks by motor boat. They did a little kayaking and hiked up to a nunatak (a peak that pokes up above the ice sheet). A number of adventure-travel agencies, based in Spain and elsewhere, offer similar tours.
This article was originally published on GearJunkie.
Yvon Chouinard may have given away his company to fight climate change, but he's hardly taking a vacation.
The Patagonia founder figures large in the company's latest documentary about improving our collective stewardship of the environment. "Home, Grown" follows architect and climber Dylan Johnson and a small crew as they build two houses in California. The catch? They're using straw bales that would otherwise have gone to waste.
When building materials contribute an estimated 5-15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a Patagonia press release, finding sustainable ways to build will be a necessary part of addressing climate change.
"Which begs the question: What if we used materials that not only take less carbon to produce, but also can capture and store carbon?" the company said in a statement.
Folksy wisdom meets modern problem-solving in this short doc about yet another way we could do better by Mother Earth.
Yesterday at 105˚F in my central Texas city, I watched a haggard man remove an irrigation valve cover in a parking lot median, open the valve inside, and stand directly in the resulting blast.
He’s not the only one getting creative to beat this summer’s exceptional heat. But where he looked underground for relief, someone else is looking the other direction — by a very long way.
One University of Hawaiʻi astronomer thinks we can cool Earth by tying a giant umbrella to an asteroid, then stationing it between the earth and the sun. A peer-reviewed paper detailing the idea, called “Solar radiation management with a tethered sun shield,” appeared yesterday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
There’s no indication that work on this counterweighted solar shield is underway, but if an effort did succeed, it could “mitigate climate change within decades,” according to the University's UH News.
It’s pretty conceptual. Take it from study author Istvan Szapudi.
Weight is the main obstacle
“In Hawaiʻi, many use an umbrella to block the sunlight as they walk about during the day. I was thinking, could we do the same for Earth and thereby mitigate the impending catastrophe of climate change?” Szapudi told the University.
For a structure, the paper suggests that multiple shields “could open up in a petal configuration” once in orbit. Connected to counterweights, “a slow opening allows the gradual filling of the counterweight with lunar dust or asteroid material.”
Feasible or not, it seems like a cool idea. As the paper points out, plenty of scientists have proposed cooling the planet with shade structures in space before. Realizing it’s cooler in the shade doesn’t take a — ready for this one? — rocket scientist.
But weight is a fatal flaw. To deflect away 1.7% of the sun’s energy, we’d need a shield that weighed about 32,000 tonnes, Szapudi's team calculated. Today’s strongest rocket systems can only deposit about 45 tonnes into low orbit.
Not only that, the structures would need to stay at a steady weight and the proposed “tethers” would need to remain attached to keep them all in orbit.
“If multiple tethers hold the shield, breaking one or two would not create an accident,” the paper postulates. But it “has enough weight to wreak havoc if it accidentally crashes on Earth.”
It also notes that sourcing cables strong enough to do the job is a major obstacle.
With a glimmer of intuition, though, the proposal does at least indicate a solution to the problem at hand. If you need thing A in place B but it takes too much work to bring thing A with you on your way there — then use what you find when you arrive.
Until then, I know just what parking lot median to visit for a cool-down right here on Earth.
Swiss police have identified the remains of a mountaineer found two weeks ago in the Swiss Alps.
On July 12, some mountaineers found a body on the Theodul Glacier in the Pennine Alps, near the Italian border. Yesterday, the police announced that DNA has revealed that the body belongs to a 38-year-old German mountaineer who went missing in September, 1986.
From their records, police now know the name of the man, but those details are not public.
At least 300 people (including hikers, skiers, and mountaineers) have gone missing in the Alps in the last century. It seems that every year now, human remains emerge from the quickly melting ice.
On June 11, a huge chunk of the summit of Fluchthorn (also known as Piz Fenga) collapsed. The 3,399m mountain lies in the Silvretta Alps on the border between Austria and Switzerland. Thousands of tons of rock fell because of thawing permafrost.
Miraculously, local authorities report no injuries. Onlookers recorded the collapse.
This is not the first collapse in the area. Last month, authorities evacuated residents of the Swiss village of Brienz because of rockfall danger.
After a scorching summer, Europe is now having one of the warmest winters ever registered.
Hopes for alpine ski resorts faded with the arrival of the New Year and what has so far been a scorching January. Temperatures in Switzerland were 20˚C on Monday, and record highs were also recorded in the Czech Republic, Germany, and Poland.
In France, the night of December 30-31 was the warmest since records began. Temperatures soared to nearly 25˚C in the southwest on New Year's Day, reports Yahoo News.
Artificial snow or nothing
Warm winters are not new to Western European mountains, especially early in the season. But this year is the worst ever. Most resorts in the Alps and the Pyrenees are relying on artificial snow. For some of them, it's been too warm even for that. Some have closed temporarily or for the rest of the season.
The problem is that artificial snow cannons need temperatures lower than about 4˚C in order to work. Meanwhile, central Europe has been baking in a heat wave since New Year's. On January 1, temperatures reached 19ºC in Budapest, 25º in southern France and the northern coast of Spain, 19ºC in the usually freezing Warsaw, almost 20˚ in the Czech Republic, and 20ºC in Liechtenstein, according to ABC.
The popular ski jump competition celebrated every January 1 in Garmisch Pasterkirchen, Germany took place in all-artificial snow and plastic pads. Check the video below:
Second stage, second win for Halvor Egner Granerud! pic.twitter.com/xjc3HTFyve
— FIS Ski Jumping (@FISskijumping) January 1, 2023
In the Swiss resort of Adelboden, the World Cup competitions scheduled for next weekend will take place, thanks to artificial snow. Many feared that the events would have to be canceled after thermometers hit an astonishing 20ºC around New Year, reports the BBC.
Les Contamines, a French resort overlooking Mont Blanc, just canceled this weekend’s World Cup telemark ski race because of a lack of snow, Time reported.
Half of France's ski runs were closed earlier this week, Lugares de Nieve reported. Other resorts are also closing, such as Gourette and Ax 3 Domaines in the Pyrenees.
Only Scandinavian resorts in Sweden and Norway have managed to avoid the warm temperatures and lack of snow, thanks to shorter days and their northerly locations near the Arctic Circle.
Why is this happening?
Southerly winds, facilitated by clear skies, have pushed a mass of warm air from northern Africa. Not surprisingly, meteorologists believe that climate change is driving the anomalies. In a warmer atmosphere, temperature variations are wider.
Most expect that this will not be an isolated phenomenon, but an unstoppable trend. For the ski and snow-related tourism industry, it's a disaster.
In the future, only resorts above 2,500m will get enough natural snow to stay in business, according to the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research. For mountain towns and the lower slopes of virtually all European ski reports, this means that "By the end of the century, [it's] just going to be over...skiing in the Alps as we know it,” climate science professor Win Thiery told Sky News.
While the bigger resorts may be high enough to keep natural snow on their upper sections, some lower-level resorts across France, Switzerland, and Italy have no chance. Instead, they must consider offering summer options like hiking and cycling.
While this winter is particularly extreme, warming has been going on for many years. "Nearly half the 169 ski resorts that were forced to shut down since 1951 did so for a lack of snow," Euronews reported last year, citing research from the University of Grenoble.
The only bright side is that the lower energy consumption has spared the European countries the feared power scarcity expected by experts -- and Vladimir Putin.
According to Candide Thovex's X-Games profile page, the French skier "has a natural feel for transitions." After watching this short clip that the French athlete posted to Twitter, I'm inclined to agree.
In the clip, Thovex slides nimbly down a patchy, mostly snowless slope before catching huge air with a quaint cabin in the background.
Again, I should say there's precious little snow to be had at his landing site (Thovex titled the clip "dry times.") But the Frenchman manages to find some anyway!
Check it out.
Dry times pic.twitter.com/KLLfNMoTTe
— Candide Thovex (@CandideThovex) January 3, 2023
Four months before the Everest season, authorities are trying to deal with a pressing problem: the effects of climate change on the Khumbu Glacier. Specifically, how safe is Base Camp, and should they do something about it?
Last fall, Andrzej Bargiel said he wanted to ski Everest as soon as possible because “global warming is affecting the high-altitude mountains and this activity may not be feasible in 10 years.”
During the 2022 spring season, some climbers mentioned that the glacier behind their tents was so unstable that they felt insecure at times. Sito Carcavilla, one of the last summiters of the season, recently mentioned in a lecture that authorities were planning to move the Base Camp from the glacier to the top of a lateral moraine.
Below, the Everest summit video by Sito Carcavilla.
How safe is the Khumbu Glacier?
However, it is far from clear if or where Everest Base Camp will be moved. There is no unanimous opinion about either its state or possible corrective measures.
Nepal's Ministry of Tourism has set up a committee to study the relocation issue. Nima Nuru Sherpa, president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, is heading the initiative. Among those consulted is Dawa Steven Sherpa, CEO of Asian Trekking and an outstanding figure in environmental and conservational issues in Nepal.
Dawa Steven found time to discuss the Everest Base Camp issue with ExplorersWeb.
'EBC is in the safest location it can be'
Did you notice anything unusual about Everest Base Camp last season? Was the glacier more unstable than usual or were the tents more at risk of sinking into hidden crevasses?
Dawa Steven: Base Camp and the Khumbu Glacier on which it sits is no more unstable than in the past. There certainly are no cavities under the ice that could swallow up Base Camp or pose a threat to anyone's life. Also, no crevasses are suddenly ripping open overnight to devour tents.
Having said that, it's definitely warmer on the mountain than it used to be, and there are indicators that reflect that. There are larger serac collapses and avalanches on the slopes of Nuptse, the west shoulder, and Pumori than previously. They are also more frequent. A stream now flows through Base Camp year-round, and the height of the pinnacles there is measurably lower than before.
As the ice underfoot melts much faster during the climbing season, it requires us to fix the floors of our tents more frequently. More concerning though, the Icefall feels less stable. Changes to the route do seem to happen faster now.
Is Everest Base Camp safe in its current location?
It is in the safest location it can be. The avalanches off the slopes of the west shoulder, Nuptse, Pumori, etc. are a bigger concern to me than the alleged instability of the Khumbu Glacier. As such, I would say that Base Camp is safer where it currently is than if it were relocated onto the lateral moraine, closer to the avalanches.
Same location for 2023
What are the odds that EBC will be moved for 2023?
This decision is not advanced at all, and the Ministry is simply studying if it's even necessary to do so. In any case, the Ministry has clearly said to me that this will in no way will impact the 2023 season. In other words, Base Camp will not be relocated by then, if ever.
Even if Everest BC were moved farther away from the Khumbu Icefall, what would prevent teams from setting up an Advanced Base Camp on the glacier, where it was before?
It would be difficult to argue against putting up a camp at the current Base Camp. In the past, Everest has had various permutations regarding locations and the number of camps on each part of the mountain.
Hypothetically, any forced relocation of Base Camp, or any other camp for that matter, opens up a much bigger discussion about the self-determination of the climber and the role of government. Also, the question of responsibility and liability may arise should an accident happen at the government-designated campsite.
Keeping Sherpas safe
Everest expeditions will have to deal with climate change anyway. Any good ideas to improve the situation in the near future?
Climate change is certainly affecting all the Himalaya, and climbing on Everest is going to have to adapt. We have to do whatever we can to keep climbers, and climbing Sherpas in particular, safe. This would entail both policy changes and better use of technology without compromising the spirit of mountaineering.
For example, the government could allow a cache of equipment at Camp 2 so Sherpas don't have to take the same equipment up every season. To ensure that the equipment cache is not dumped, the government could hold on to a deposit, in case the responsible company does not come back the following season. This deposit could go toward removing the equipment from the mountain.
As for technology, there are many possible solutions, from making more use of helicopters (admittedly a contentious subject) to using motion capture technology to inform in real time about changes to the Icefall and the seracs. Also, more weather stations and possibly even weather radars would give much better forecasts. This would make not only mountaineering but also aviation safer.
Helicopters to Camp 2
In recent seasons, rope-fixing teams and gear are being airlifted to C2, in order to avoid the Khumbu Icefall. Also, Marc Batard says he wants to open and fix with lines and ladders an alternative route across the flank of Nuptse to C2. Do you think either of these measures will become the norm?
The use of helicopters to shuttle equipment and rope-fixing teams is a testament to the improvement in the performance of these aircraft and the reduction of their operating costs. This option was not viable in the past. These are market forces and not a response to climate change.
Objectively speaking, I cannot see the difference for the "average Everester" whether the ropes were carried up by Sherpas through the Icefall or flown up by chopper over it. Of course, it is not mountaineering to the puritanical alpinist, but Everest never has been. Throw into that argument that it will reduce the Sherpas' exposure to the Icefall, thus keeping them safer, and it's a difficult argument to counter. Subjectively speaking though, I do believe that there needs to be a reasonable limit to the use of helicopters.
Batard's route: harder, more avalanche-prone
As far as Marc Batard's new route is concerned, I would love to be proven wrong but I don't think that it is a viable option for Sherpas. It is a longer, tougher, and apparently more avalanche-prone route. As one of my sirdars laughingly told me, "If I tell the Sherpas to use that route, they're going to kill me."
Nevertheless, I think it's a great exercise in exploring and seeking unconventional solutions, so I do appreciate his efforts.
What do you think of Andrzej Bargiel's comments about needing to ski down Everest asap, before global warming makes it impossible?
I am not an extreme skier and can't say what conditions he needs to ski. It's true that the snowline has receded much farther up the mountains in recent decades. At the same time, heavy precipitation is also more frequent. [In fact, heavy snowfall thwarted Bargiel's attempt this fall.] I'll leave that one up to the skiers.
Dawa Steven Sherpa, CEO of Asian Trekking, has summited Everest three times, as well as five other 8,000'ers and many lesser peaks. Dawa’s environmental and conservation efforts have been globally recognized by many international agencies, including the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and the International Olympic Committee. He is also a climate change ambassador for WWF and patron of the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award Nepal.
Dawa’s father is Ang Tschering Sherpa, founder of Asian Trekking and his mother is from Belgium. Dawa grew up in Nepal and speaks five languages.
It's a well-used trope that freshly minted parents view the world in a new light after the birth of their children. I mostly avoided the cliché, with one exception. The burgeoning climate change anxiety I've been feeling for the last 10 years or so went into overdrive a few days after my son entered this world. It hasn't slowed down since.
I thought about that anxiety quite a bit as I watched "Pleistocene Park", a quirky new documentary by Luke Griswold-Tergis currently touring the mountain festival circuit. The film follows a beret-wearing, chain smoking Russian geophysicist named Sergey Zimov and his son Nikita as they attempt to stave off the melting of the Siberian permafrost.
If that sounds overwhelming, just wait. The Zimovs, along with their families and a cadre of stocky, muck-boot-wearing farmhands, are attempting to reach this lofty goal via the unusual — some would say impossible — method of returning the global north to the "mammoth steppe" ecosystem last witnessed over 10,000 years ago.
The theory
Current climate-change models don't account for the massive amounts of carbon stored in permafrost, and that's a real problem, as the icy layer is rapidly melting. The resulting feedback loop could speed up climate change in ways we can't currently comprehend. Sergey Zimov's theory and plan, assembled after decades of life and study in Siberia, is this:
- Snow is a good insulator, and when undisturbed, it keeps soil levels warm enough that the Earth's recent uptick in temperature causes even more permafrost melting.
- Snow that is disturbed through the foraging action of millions of grassland fauna and megafauna leads to less insulated, cooler soil — cool enough to keep the permafrost frozen throughout the summer.
- The ecosystem needed to create this cooling no longer exists.
- The only way to create the needed ecosystem is to bring in grazing animals a few at a time, manage their populations until they number in the millions, and then steward them to terraform the environment.
- Maybe, eventually, cloned woolly mammoths join the party.
That's exactly what Sergey and Nikita are attempting with Pleistocene Park. Little by little, they fundraise and scrape together cash and then purchase yak, moose, elk, horses, bison, and other animals, often transporting them vast distances across Europe and Asia to the park's swampy 80-square-kilometre confines in Russia's Sakha Republic.
It's a grueling, painstakingly slow process, and still more of an idea than a fully realized concept. And yet the two men soldier on.
The park is partly an experiment to prove Sergey's theories. Partly it's an investment in the future, as reaching the numbers of grazing animals needed to create the ecosystem in 50 years necessitates action now. Partly it's an exercise in, as Griswold-Tergis says in the film, "pathological optimism."
And partly it's a grim battle against fatalism, the unforgiving Siberian elements, and plain bad luck.
Entropy
For a documentary chronicling an epic and lofty attempt at windmill tilting (or is it genius?), the film's moment-by-moment rhythms are rooted in the miserable realities of trying to make any kind of ambitious project work at unforgiving latitudes. Clouds of mosquitoes abound. Mud is everywhere. Critical machinery is always breaking down, and the common method of repair seems to be a blend of Slavic curses and violent hammer blows.
There are always setbacks, and many are not overcome. Sergey smokes and stalks the larches or stretches out on a couch, his mood vacillating wildly between optimistic pride and bleak despair. Nikita stares blankly into the camera, his shoulders set with filial responsibility, his eyes reddened by weariness. He refuses to speculate on the park's future success.
But he's always in action — worrying over animals, trucking new additions across 11 times zones, felling trees, and running a Kickstarter campaign.
These scenes of changing tires and fretting over bison encapsulate the film's themes. Where is the line between optimism and obsession? Is doing something — anything — about our oncoming climate disaster better than doing nothing at all?
We can see this battle between optimism and fatalism lurking behind every action in "Pleistocene Park" — a battle that connected deeply with me as a new father worried about the effects climate change will have on my growing family.
Pathological optimism
It took Luke Griswold-Tergis over eight years to make "Pleistocene Park", and his film is a masterclass in what it means to gain the trust of a documentary subject. His camera captures the Zimovs with intimacy and familiarity, even as he himself is drawn into the park's troubles and triumphs. The film's editor Maureen Gosling also deserves major plaudits for taking what was surely hundreds of hours of achingly similar footage and weaving it into an effective narrative.
If the film has a flaw, it's that it features not one but two extended sequences that involve transporting animals across great distances, and the two sequences are almost identical in challenges faced and overcome. But that's life at Pleistocene Park — fighting the same battles over and over again, with little progress to show for it, but choosing to fight anyway.
The climate scientists interviewed in the film aren't at all sure that Zimov's plan will work. But to a person, they respect that someone is taking action. The days of half measures are over. Full commitment — even to an idea that seems, at best, implausible — is the only way forward.
Pathological optimism indeed.
Vice Media will broadcast/stream Pleistocene Park in early 2023.
Big fish stories are not only real — they might become more common in a warming world.
Across the globe, sightings of monstrously large fish have seemed to increase in recent years. Last year, California kayakers spotted a three-metre-long sunfish nearly as long as the biggest specimen ever recorded.
Other reports from the last 18 months include a 300-kilo stingray off the coast of Cambodia, a 190-kilo lake sturgeon caught in the Detroit River, and even a 45-kilo opah in Oregon. And a 30-kilo hybrid of leather carp and koi -- a kind of giant goldfish -- made headlines this week after an angler spent 25 minutes reeling it in.
Climate change has caused massive changes in the migration patterns of fish. That causes all of them — including the monstrous variety — to show up in unexpected places. (That opah fish in Oregon, for example, is typically only found in tropical waters.)
And some research suggests that the increased temperatures might result in larger individuals.
Changing migration patterns
Just a few years ago, scientists found that the ocean has taken the brunt of climate change.
In fact, the earth's oceans have absorbed more than 90 percent of the heat gained by the planet between 1971 and 2010. That's the finding of a University of Oxford study that looked at ocean temperature change between 1871 and 2017.
That has many negative impacts on the ocean, including the migration patterns of fish.
The fish “are relocating to new environments,” Francisco Werner, director of scientific programs at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, told The Washington Post. He said the ocean's fishes are “trying to maintain some optimum temperatures and preferred temperature ranges that they like."
That means many fish populations have started moving toward the poles, with their cooler waters.
A confused fishery
Warming waters may affect some species positively while cooking others beyond their ability to adapt.
That's evident from the Maine lobster boom, which was "thriving thanks to climate change" in Dec. 2021. Just a month after that CBS story, UPI reported that "climate change could end" the state's explosion in lobster populations.
A study from Australia found that a warming planet might also boost fish size.
"As time passes and the temperature continues to influence organisms, estuaries could end up having individuals that have a higher reproductive rate and lower mortality rates, leading to a population with fast-growing predator fish," according to the study.
In other words, we might see more monster fish in the immediate future. But without human action, a hot disaster continues to threaten the earth's oceans.
More than 70 people have been killed or are missing in the late-season floods that struck Nepal in October.
Many who survived now face homelessness, as the widespread flooding displaced tens of thousands of Nepalis from their homes, The Himalayan Times reported.
High death tolls from monsoons are an annual occurrence in the country. Yet the region's rainy season was more prolonged and more intense this year. The results have been massive destruction in Nepal, India, and Pakistan, with climate change only expected to worsen the situation in coming years.
Yet the toll in Nepal might have been worse without improved foreign aid.
Anticipating disaster
The World Food Programme (WFP) has frequently helped Nepal recover from these annual disasters. But in recent years, the organization has taken a more proactive approach. United Nations agencies working in the country have begun using predictive analytics and weather forecast data to respond more quickly.
That allowed officials to quickly help flooded communities in the Karnali River Basin. The WFP sent early warnings and emergency cash to 3,000 households in areas that the data deemed high risk.
The Nepali Times reported that this "anticipatory action" likely saved lives and reduced the floods' overall impact. More than 15,000 people in the Karnali Basin benefited from those cash payments of 15,000 rupees.
"Nepal is extremely prone to climate-related disasters, and this approach offers a new and effective way of supporting communities not only to cope with, but also adapt to the impact of the climate crisis," Robert Kasca, WFP Representative and Country Director in Nepal, told The Nepali Times. "With reliable forecasts, it is increasingly possible to anticipate extreme weather events and take necessary action in advance."
UN to expand preemptive efforts
Last year, the World Food Programme gave cash to 1,665 households before flood emergencies hit their villages. That was the fastest forecast-based response in the organization's history, reaching targeted households in four hours.
It's part of a broader effort by UN humanitarian groups to address climate change through pre-meditated aid.
When the Arête des Cosmiques near Mont Blanc collapsed this week in a spectacular avalanche of rocks, it's a miracle that none of the trekkers below were hurt. The video, shot by one of a group of climbers, says it all.
"Aiguille de Midi; met Killian Jornet and watched the Cosmiques Arête fall apart," Nick Lozika, one of the climbers, wrote on Instagram. Lower down the glacier, more climbers were coming up. For a time, it seemed as if they would be caught in the rockslide.
The area is one of the most visited in the mountains around Chamonix. It is popular as a first experience on alpine ridges. It is easily accessible from the Aiguille de Midi cable car and usually offers good-quality rock, varied pitches, relatively low difficulty (AD), and plenty of places to add protection, SummitPost writes.
Granite still unsafe
After a dry spring and a scorchingly hot summer, temperatures have decreased around Chamonix, improving conditions on the glaciers and peaks. Mont Blanc, for instance, has been okay to climb in the last two weeks, and the refuges have opened again.
"But the effect of thawing permafrost is a different story," IFMGA guide Helias Milleiroux told ExplorersWeb. "It is now, after the big heat, when big rockslides are more likely, especially on higher granite peaks."
Granite is especially sensitive to thawing permafrost because the ice inside the cracks in the rock melts slowly and leaves the slabs in place, but extremely unstable.
"The granite routes look fine, but they are completely unpredictable. One slab is perfectly safe, and then the next one slides down from under your feet."
Milleiroux has been guiding in the valley all summer.
"I climbed the Freney Pillar with my sister in July and the rock was in good condition. The problem back then was that the approach route over the glacier was dry and heavily crevassed."
According to Millerioux, that was the norm this summer: The classical routes were hard to access. "Tougher conditions on the glaciers scared off mountaineers and as a result, the mountains have been nearly empty."
He points out that the risk now is that some people may feel safe when they are not. For the next few weeks, he recommends limestone rather than granite routes.
"The structure of limestone is different and, in the present conditions, safer," he said.
Who is to blame for the piles of garbage on K2 and what is being done to clean up the mountain?
Even as the photos of abandoned tents and piles of, well, crap appeared online, a cleaning campaign had begun. A team from the Central Karakoram National Park (CKNP) waited for all the climbers to descend before climbing up to retrieve most of the garbage and old ropes from the higher camps. From July 19 to August 18, they collected 1,610kg of refuse between K2 Base Camp and Camp 4.
Pakistan's drinking water
CKNP ecologist S. Yasir Abbas Rizvi told ExplorersWeb that keeping the mountains clean is a matter of individual responsibility for each climber. It's not just that Camp 2 looks disgusting. It's about irreparable damage to the fragile glacial ecosystem.
The Karakorum is home to endangered wildlife and many human communities. Remarkably, it also provides drinking water (from the Baltoro, Biafo, and Hispar Glaciers) for virtually the entire country of 221 million inhabitants.
Yasir Abbas is central to the current cleaning campaign, but since 2008, his work at the CKNP has a wide scope. He surveys and helps protect wildlife and collaborates with local villages.
"Since 2015, the CKNP is in charge of managing waste in the Karakoram," he said. "In previous years, we counted on the job done by several NGOs and cleaning expeditions. The main problem is the huge area we have to cover. The approach trek to K2 alone includes 62km of glacial terrain."
The CKNP is also in charge of collecting fees from climbers, which varies depending on the activity and area. For foreign K2 expedition members, the fee is $200.
More garbage than ever
"Last year, which was a relatively quiet season, we collected 14,200kg [of garbage] between the Baltoro and the 8,000m base camps. This year, we've retrieved 20,000kg."
The CKNP counts on a 15-person team to collect the garbage. However, not everyone is fit enough to climb K2 to clean it.
"We had to hire proper climbers, people capable of being at high altitude and in bad weather," Yasir Abbas said. "After the reports appeared in the media, we asked them [the hired climbers] to focus first on Camp 2 and then on Camp 1 and Camp 3. The team reached most of the way to Camp 4. We also tried to retrieve as many old ropes as possible."
This year, the situation in Camp 2 was especially bad because of high temperatures. Part of the snow cover melted and exposed garbage that had been accumulating for years.
The number of visitors to the CKNP is growing every year. "We have installed trash bins and portable toilets along the Baltoro and in Base Camp," said Yasir Abbas. "And there is a new incinerator in Askole. As for the K2 expeditions, all we ask is for them to bring their garbage down to Base Camp. We will take charge of it from that point. We will carry it the 100km to Askole for incineration. But the climbers must at least do that job [bring it down]."
Investigation and punishment ahead
Meanwhile, the Gilgit-Baltistan government has called for an investigation into who left the garbage.
"All irresponsible tour operators [should] be blacklisted and denied future trekking permits," the notice said. You can read it in full below.
A caution to foreign cleanup expeditions
Abbas also told ExplorersWeb about a "surprising" post recently shared on Instagram by Nirmal Purja. Purja announced plans for a cleanup campaign on K2 next year, run by his Nimsdai Foundation, and asked for donations to support it.
"No foreign organization is allowed to carry out cleaning campaigns in CKNP boundaries of Gilgit-Baltistan, including on K2, without prior agreement and permission in writing from local authorities," Abbas said. "Mr. Purja also posted something similar last year but has never asked for permission or even consulted with CKNP or local authorities."
Many have donated to the Nimsdai Foundation since the announcement. However, the post also faced a backlash from the international climbing community.
Poland's Janusz Golab is currently on his way with Andrzej Bargiel for a no-O2 climb of Everest (and Bargiel's ski descent). Says Golab, "In [Purja's] video, you can see that these are tents from the agencies. Agencies take quite a lot of money for garbage disposal, and now they reach for more money to clean up after themselves? Very interesting."
Struggling for a clean Karakoram
Climbers consulted by ExplorersWeb confirmed that there are some toilet barrels installed at Concordia but they need better maintenance. At K2 Base Camp itself, expedition teams install their own latrines.
In a previous interview with ExplorersWeb, Flor Cuenca of Peru criticized the state of higher camps, with years of accumulated garbage.
"Some companies do their job and carry garbage down, others don't," she said.
Cuenca is not aware of the work done by each outfitter. But she did witness Imagine Nepal, 8K, and Pioneer Expedition piling their garbage in Base Camp, ready to be carried down the valley. She is concerned, however, that previously at some base camps, the garbage was burned on the spot or thrown into crevasses instead of carried out.
Taiwan's Grace Tseng and Fish Tri shared a number of posts about the garbage on social media and tried to gather some from higher camps. But with so much around, there is not much they could do.
The terrain is difficult and the available resources are scarce. Pakistan is currently facing the worst floods in years, and most resources are understandably focused on this emergency rather than on the mountains. This makes it even more important for climbers to assume responsibility to slow down the decline of the areas they depend on.
Closing the Italian side of the Matterhorn -- where the iconic peak is known as Cervino -- sits poorly with many climbers, both professional and amateur. Guides make most of their summer income leading clients up the 4,478m spire. And after enduring two years of lockdowns and restrictions, climbers of all stripes are itchy to attempt their long-deferred goals.
Yet conditions have been too unstable for rescuers to guarantee even their own safety. Hence the closure. Nevertheless, a few reckless climbers ignore the signs, despite high risks not just to life and limb, but to their bank accounts.
The latest transgression occurred two days ago, when a Czech and a Slovak climber ventured up the peak's Italian normal route, the so-called Cresta del Leone (Lion's Ridge). This follows the southwest ridge on the border between Italy and Switzerland. (You can read more about the route, which is slightly harder than the classical Hornli ridge on the Swiss side, at SummitPost.)
Somehow, the pair were unable to continue beyond the Col Felicite at 4,300m. This is the last narrow saddle before the final pitch to the summit. They called for a rescue at 6:30 pm.
A costly mistake
A helicopter picked them up and took them to Breuill-Cervinia. Here, Italian law enforcement was waiting for them. They charged the climbers not only with the entire cost of the rescue -- between 7,000 and 9,000 euros -- but with a fine for ignoring the closure. This closure had been in place since August 2, after a major rockslide made the mountain just too hazardous.
This is the third episode in the area this summer, reported Montagna.org. On August 13, the police fined a Polish climber rescued at 4,000m on Pic Tyndall, a shoulder of the Matterhorn. Three other Polish climbers asked for rescue but then canceled the SOS after they found shelter in the Capanna Carrel shelter (3,830m), thus dodging the fine.
What does "closed" mean?
As with nearby Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn is not "closed" in a practical sense. It is nearly impossible to control who approaches its flanks. In fact, some people are climbing Cervino these days and even writing about it. Temperatures in Central Europe decreased during the last half of August, and conditions have generally improved. But Italian authorities have not yet lifted the ban.
So climbers on that side of the mountain will get away with it as long as everything goes well. But if they get in trouble, they will have to face fines and will have to pay these themselves. Insurance policies will not cover incidents that occur when the insured party ignores restrictions.
The Matterhorn is open on the Swiss side
Those really willing to climb Matterhorn without breaking rules may do so from the Swiss side, which is currently open and in good shape.
"The Matterhorn reopened more than two weeks ago for guided and unguided parties, and conditions are excellent," Swiss guide Jean Pavilliard told ExplorersWeb. "We had some new snow a few days ago but it's still great."
Pavilliard admitted they did have issues with rockfall and with a big crack on the trail leading to the Hörnli hut at 3,260m. The trail has been re-routed to avoid this section.
An unusually dry winter followed by record-breaking summer temperatures has caused water levels to plummet in much of the world, especially in Europe. Italy’s River Tiber has dropped a metre. France’s longest river, Loire, has never flowed so slowly. The Rhine, which runs through six countries, is becoming impassable by barge.
Archaeologists and historians can be forgiven for looking at the silver lining in this summer's worldwide drought, the worst in 500 years. As waters recede in the baking heat, ancient cities, statues, and ships have emerged from the watery tombs in which they have hidden for decades or centuries. Here are some of them.
Hunger stones
A Hunger Stone is a stark reminder of drought’s hardship. There are dozens of Hunger Stones scattered throughout Europe. These are among the continent's oldest hydrological monuments, marking the drought years of 1417 and 1473.
Hunger Stones indicated bad harvests, lack of food, high prices, and hunger for poor people. One in Germany reads, “When this goes under, life will become colorful again.”
Spanish Stonehenge
For half a century, the so-called Spanish Stonehenge, or Guadalperal Dolmen, lay hidden in a corner of the Valdecanas Reservoir, in Spain's Cáceres province.
Believed to be between 5,000 and 7,000 years old, the prehistoric stone circle consists of dozens of megalithic stones. German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier first discovered it in 1926. It has only been visible four times since a rural development project flooded the area in 1963.
Reservoirs dry up, ghost towns re-emerge
Near the Portuguese border, the small town Aceredo has similarly reappeared. In 1992, the River Lima drowned the village to make room for a reservoir. As the reservoir has dried, the ghostly buildings have returned.
When the Scar House Reservoir was created in Yorkshire in the 1920s, it covered the remains of a medieval village. Now that water in the reservoir has receded more than 50 percent, the ancient settlement has reappeared.
Even more haunting is the emergence of an abandoned Roman fort in Spain's Ourense province. The two-hectare site of Aquis Querquennis was built between 69 and 79 AD and abandoned around 120 AD. It is usually underwater at the bottom of the As Conchas Reservoir.
Also in Spain, the gothic arches of a medieval bridge dating back to the 15th century began to peek out from the Cijara Reservoir in Extremadura in early summer. Now the bridge is fully exposed. It has been underwater for almost 70 years.
In Catalina, the small island off the north coast of the Península de Almina in Ceuta, the ancient Sant Romà de Sau church has resisted disappearing entirely by keeping a turret peering out of the water since the 1960s. Now the rest of the holy building has joined the turret on dry land.
World War II ships
In Italy, the extreme heat had been so bad that a state of emergency exists around the River Po. Recently, the river level became so low that an old German barge from World War II reappeared.
The Zibello sank in 1943 and has lain underwater until recently. Further south, the ruins of an ancient bridge from the Roman emperor Nero’s reign have resurfaced.
Europe’s second longest river, the Danube, has fallen to its lowest level in almost a century. More than 20 German warships have become visible in a Serbian section of the river near Prahovo. Some are partly buried in sandbanks. Others have bridges and turrets intact. The vessels were some of the hundreds scattered along the Danube by Nazi Germany's Black Sea fleet in 1944.
Bodies, wreckage thaw out of glaciers
In Switzerland, two sets of unidentified human bones have been discovered on an old path crossing the Chessjen Glacier. No one knows how long they have been there. But as glaciers melt, the bodies of people who disappeared long ago are coming out of the ice. Currently, the police in Valais have a list of 300 people who have vanished in their region since 1925. In time, descendants of the missing 300 may learn the fate of their relatives.
The Aletsch Glacier, for example, seems to have been particularly hazardous over the years. In 2012, the bodies of three brothers who disappeared in 1926 turned up. In 2017, the remains of a couple missing since 1942 showed up on the glacier. Debris from a 1968 plane crash also turned up recently. As the Aletsch melts away, we can expect more grisly discoveries.
An Asian river reveals its treasures
Further afield, three Buddhist statues more than 600 years old have emerged from China's Yangtze River. Built during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the statues may have blessed passing boats. Today, their presence is anything but a blessing, since the drought in the region has caused a shortage of hydropower.
The oldest find of all
North America may not have Roman monuments, but the hot summer has exposed something far more ancient: 113-million-year-old dinosaur tracks in central Texas. Exposed by the severe drought's effect on a river bed, the tracks may have belonged to a single acrocanthosaurus that walked the trail for about 30m. There are an estimated 140 tracks in total from this one dinosaur, with about 60 visible now. For years, they sat beneath water and sediment. They now rank among the best preserved dinosaur tracks in the world. The acrocanthosaurus looked similar to a T. Rex and was almost as big.
On Saturday, Mingma G decided to call his Nanga Parbat expedition off because of the high risk of further avalanches and rockfall. As Tsering Sherpa demonstrated on Instagram, it's clear he was not exaggerating.
At least three major avalanches swept the team's planned route. One of them nearly caught Tsering and Mingma G. The Imagine Nepal pair had gone ahead to check the state of the ropes and the camps. Needless to say, they found no trace of either.
Before the avalanches, everything was primed for a summit push. “The rope was fixed, we had dropped oxygen at Camp II, we had planned for the summit push on September 2," Tsering told Everest Chronicle.
But clouds had enveloped Nanga Parbat lately, and frequent rain had destabilized the entire Kinshoffer Face. Constant avalanches fell from the Mazeno Ridge, and rocks plummeted right across the route.
IFMGA guide Tsering (sometimes spelled Chhiring) Sherpa made headlines some weeks ago after summiting K2 in 12 hours and 20 minutes (with supplementary O2). He is one of Imagine Nepal's head guides.
Pakistan's climate dystopia
Meanwhile, the death toll from flooding across Pakistan continues to rise. The official tally is now 1,061 victims. The rain and flooding are the worst in the last 30 years, Pakistan's Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, said today.
"This is very far from a normal monsoon -- it is climate dystopia at our doorstep," Climate Minister Sherry Rehman told AFP.
The damage could get even worse as the Indus river, the largest in the country, is threatening to burst its banks.
Despite conditions, at least one team is determined to climb in Pakistan within the next few days. Kazuya Hiraide and Kenro Nakajima of Japan are traveling to Gilgit today to begin their approach trek to Karun Koh.
The latest casualty of soaring temperatures and drought in the European Alps has been the Bivacco Alberico, better known as Bivouac de la Fourche. The precariously perched mountain hut lost its support in a rockslide, sending the entire cabin tumbling to the Brenva Glacier far below.
Details are still scarce, but no deaths or injuries have been reported.
The small wooden cabin sat on a metal frame at Col de la Fourche on the Southwest Face of Mont Maudit, one of the 4,000m peaks leading to Mont Blanc. The refuge was an essential shelter for climbers attempting the classical Kuffner Ridge up Mont Maudit. It was also a useful stopover for those eyeing Mont Blanc from the Brenva Spur, the Aiguille Blanche, and the Aiguilles du Diable.
In the video below, posted by Aosta Sera, a helicopter reveals the remains of the building scattered along the rocky face.
Other alpine huts around the world have also felt the effects of climate change. Earlier this summer, Canadian national park officials dismantled the 100-year-old Abbot Hut in the Rockies. Erosion and glacial retreat had left the platform on which it rested beyond repair.
Europe’s summer-long heat and drought have had one positive consequence. Lower water levels in lakes, rivers, and coastal areas have exposed long-sunken treasures.
Rome's historic Tiber River now shows ruins built during Nero's reign. Water levels on the Tiber have plummeted more than a metre in the last year, to a record low, exposing the remains of what might be the Nero Bridge.
Built by the Roman emperor Nero, who reigned from 54 AD until he killed himself in 68 AD, the bridge connected the Field of Mars with Tiber's opposite bank. It led to Nero’s Circus on Vatican Hill.
A controversial sovereign, Nero was celebrated for building public structures and winning military victories abroad. But his darker side saw a man who focused on art, music, and chariot races rather than politics. He killed his mother and at least one of his wives. The Nero Bridge was destroyed at the end of the Western Roman Empire. It has lain buried in the Tiber River ever since.
Dispute over the bridge's origins
Some historians, however, dispute that it is the remains of Nero Bridge.
"The origins of the bridge are uncertain, given that it is likely a bridge existed here before Nero's reign and therefore the Pons Neronianus [Nero Bridge] was probably a reconstruction of an earlier crossing," said Nicholas Temple, professor of architectural history at London Metropolitan University.
In any case, the ancient brick now high and dry above a green riverbed is a stark reminder of climate change.
The Nero Bridge isn’t the only ancient emergence as a result of Europe's severe drought. In northern Italy, World War II shipwrecks have emerged from the River Po, the country's longest river.
The Po flows 652km from the northwestern city of Turin to Venice. In a section near the central northern village of Gualtieri, a 50m-long barge called the Zibello lies beached. It once transported wood during World War II and sank in 1943.
In recent years, the boat's rusted bow became visible. But this past spring, even before the major heatwave settled in, the rest of the vessel erupted from the waters.
Worst drought since the 1950s
This is the worst drought in the region in more than 70 years. Rain hasn’t fallen in more than 100 days.
"We are in a situation where the river flow is approximately 300 cubic metres per second here in [the riverside village of] Boretto, while normally in this area we have almost 1,800 cubic metres," explained Meuccio Berselli, secretary general of the Po River Basin Authority.
More World War II relics now jut out of the sand around the Po, including a tank that German troops pushed into the water in 1945. As the drought continues, more relics from the past are sure to emerge.
The Po valley experienced droughts in 2007, 2012 and 2017. Scientists agree that the climate crisis lies behind their growing prevalence.
The Tête Rousse and Goûter refuges, essential stopovers on the normal route to Mont Blanc, will reopen on Saturday, August 20. The two key shelters were closed for two weeks during peak climbing season because of dangerous conditions on the mountain.
Cooler days ahead
Forecasts show that the heat that has bombarded most of Europe since mid-July is finally over. Cooler temperatures and some snow should shortly improve conditions on Mont Blanc.
In addition, guides have carefully monitored the dangerous Goûter Couloir and cleaned away some unstable rocks primed to fall onto the access route, Radio Mont Blanc reported.
The mayor of Saint Gervais, Jean-Marc Peillex, closed the shelters when those he called "pseudo-alpinists" -- inexperienced, poorly prepared people -- ignored the warnings and insisted on climbing Mont Blanc.
Too many exercising free will
Chamonix and Courmayeur guides have stopped offering the Mont Blanc climb, although it is the most profitable activity in the region. Most accredited mountain guides followed. IFMGA guide Ferran Latorre previously told ExplorersWeb that he had switched his scheduled Mont Blanc trips to Monte Rosa and Gran Paradiso.
However, independent climbers and some guides from different countries kept going up the mountain, preferring to "decide for themselves".
The sophisticated mountain refuges usually attract many visitors, most of them aiming to climb Mont Blanc. Goûter can host 120 visitors and Tête Rousse, 72. In summer, both refuges are usually fully booked well in advance.
Mont Blanc's Goûter route is the most popular and straightforward way to the top. Yet, there is no such thing as zero risk in the mountains, especially on the 4,809m giant of western Europe.
While adventurers have long coveted Greenland for its virgin cliffs and fiords, a wealthy group now seeks a more literal variety of treasure.
A mining company that draws support from notable billionaires has begun drilling in Greenland to search for minerals, CNN reported. The company, KoBold Metals, wants the minerals for powering a new generation of electric vehicles.
The climate crisis has created an urgent need for the cleaner energy that those minerals could provide. And company backers believe that Greenland contains one of the largest sources of nickel and cobalt anywhere.
However, in this case, the solution is also part of the problem. It's precisely because of climate change's impact on the fast-melting landscape that miners believe they can now reach these resources.
The irony won't stop them from trying.
"We are looking for a deposit that will be the first- or second-largest most significant nickel and cobalt deposit in the world," said Kurt House, CEO of KoBold Metals.
Billionaires back Greenland mining project
Several of the world's richest people have backed KoBold Metals, including Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill Gates. They want to mine parts of Greenland that have only emerged recently. Ice that covered the land for millennia has quickly melted away over the last few decades.
When the company first announced plans to drill in Greenland in March, Russia had just invaded Ukraine, adding additional weight to the mission. The invasion nearly doubled nickel prices as a result of sanctions against Russia. Russia supplies about 10 percent of the world’s nickel, Reuters reported.
“The recent unfortunate geopolitical developments clearly show that the Western world needs new deposits of these critical metals,” said Bo Steensgaard of Bluejay Mining, which is partnering with Kobold on the project.
Together, the two companies will mine the hills and valleys on Greenland's Disko Island and Nuussuaq Peninsula, hoping to find enough minerals for powering millions of electric vehicles.
Greenland's government says it's "very keen" to see mining projects progress.
Is this the beginning of the end of European alpinism?
The problems in the Alps began in early July when a serac fell on Marmolada peak in Italy, killing 11. Then guides refused to venture up the Matterhorn and other of Europe's most popular peaks. Numerous smaller accidents, many more than usual, have stretched rescue crews thin.
This week, two of Mont Blanc's most popular refuges closed to deter climbers who insisted on ignoring the warnings. It is clear that some of the most visited mountains in the world are reeling from climate change.
"I have witnessed the deterioration of glaciers since the 1980s," IFMGA guide and 14x8,000m summiter Ferran Latorre told ExplorersWeb. "But this year, nature took a leap forward. The really scary thing is that this is not going to improve in the future."
The popularity problem
The Alps' popularity is part of the problem. High numbers increase all statistics, including the bad ones. For instance, 500 people have died on Matterhorn since the tally began in the mid-1800s. By contrast, slightly over 300 climbers have died on Everest since Mallory and Irvine.
The figure is even greater on Mont Blanc, with an estimated 1,400 dead. But one must bear in mind that its slopes see thousands of climbers, most of them in summer. Mont Blanc has everything to draw crowds: an alluring altitude (it is the roof of Western Europe), great scenery, a rich history of mountaineering, and a technically easy normal route.
Apart from the deaths, the number of injured or sick climbers needing rescue is now astronomical. Even during an average season, rescuers work at capacity. But 2022 is not average. The extraordinarily high temperatures and dryness have vastly exacerbated ordinary summer perils. Glaciers lack snow, and frozen ground thaws, sending rocks and ice chunks cannonballing downhill. Sometimes, whole slopes give way.
At the same time, the number of visitors has boomed after two years of pandemic restrictions. Many of them are not prepared or even aware of the dangers that mountains pose.
In the Swiss Alps, 3,680 people needed assistance in 2021 -- 20% more than the previous year, reports Swissinfo. Most of the injured are not climbing highly difficult routes. They are hikers and cyclists.
In the lower Bavarian Alps, 30 people have died during the first six months of 2022. Previously, that was typically the final figure for the entire year.
"Tourists go on mountain routes that do not correspond to their capabilities and 'blind trust' in mobile applications," lamented Joachim Herrmann of the German Ministry of Domestic Affairs last week.
Recently, Jean-Marc Peillex, the mayor of the French mountain town of Saint Gervais, passionately denounced "pseudo-alpinists" who "play Russian roulette" on Mont Blanc. Exasperated, he finally decided to close the Goûter and Tête Rousse refuges on the peak's normal route until further notice.
The video below shows Italian rescuers airlifting an injured climber from Pollux Peak, in the Aosta valley -- just one of many rescues in the Alps this summer.
The guide's take: Ferran Latorre
The future is not bright for mountain professionals.
"Conditions this year are the hardest I have ever experienced in all my years of guiding in the Alps," Ferran Latorre told ExplorersWeb. "Yes, we saw the changes coming, but the transformation has become obvious now, and it is nightmarish."
Like many professional guides in Europe, Latorre started his season in Chamonix but had to move elsewhere as conditions on Mont Blanc deteriorated. Now, he is mainly guiding clients up Gran Paradiso and Monte Rosa.
Latorre began as a high-level rock climber and alpinist. Many of the routes he used to climb in the Mont Blanc massif in the 1980s simply do not exist anymore or are undoable in summer.
"I had never seen the glaciers so dry, so heavily crevassed. But the real worry is the instability that thawing permafrost creates. What we all considered sound terrain is not safe anymore. The entire structure of the mountains is crumbling!"
The beginning of the end of alpinism?
"Apparently easy areas have become objectively dangerous and completely unpredictable," Latorre explained. "You may take precautions on a glacier, but you cannot tell when a whole slope is going to crumble down."
Veteran guides share news when they meet in the mountain huts. One of them recently told Latorre that out of the 100 Finest Routes in the Mont Blanc massif, listed by Gaston Rebuffat in his classic reference book, many are not possible anymore. Either the ice is gone, the rock is too unstable, or the approaches are too difficult.
"This is only going to get worse," said Latorre. "At this rate, I do not know what will be climbable in the future in the Alps and other mountain ranges."
The record heat experienced across the globe this summer has taken a major toll on Norway's ice-covered islands.
NASA satellite imaging revealed record-breaking ice melt in Svalbard, Norway's arctic archipelago. Between June 1 and July 31, the total ice melt in Svalbard this year was 1.5 times larger than the last record in 2018.
Simply put, 40 gigatons (44 billion U.S. tons, 40 billion tonnes) of meltwater have poured into the Atlantic Ocean from Norway over the last 60 days.
Xavier Fettweis, a climatologist at the University of Liège, told NASA that Svalbard’s snowpack retained about 34 percent of the summer meltwater between 1981–2010. Yet the “firn,” as the layer is called, only retained 8 percent of this summer's meltwater, Fettweis said.
“The melt anomaly is 3.5 times larger than the 1981–2010 average, and 5 times the interannual variability,” Fettweis said. “Only a changing climate can explain this.”
The area also experienced early snowmelt this year. That primed ice surfaces for melting, Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado at Boulder told Axios.
Temperatures in Svalbard have stayed about 2 to 3°C above average since May — an unusually long time, Scambos said.
"May took away much of the fresh snow, exposing the glacier ice and older snow to warm air and sunlight earlier in the season than usual," Scambos said.
The image below renders the effect clearly. Light blue areas indicate where snow and firn have melted away, exposing bare ice. Clearly marked melt ponds indicate the softest spots on the surface.
Warming ice, warming mountains
It's increasingly clear to both climate scientists and climbers that changes like those in Svalbard represent a new normal.
“Svalbard is now losing more ice than it is gaining, and it is clear that this trend will continue in the future," Fettweis said.
Svalbard has become one of the fastest-warming places in the Northern Hemisphere, according to NASA. It's a "canary in the coal mine" for climate change, much like the high-altitude mountains that have become more dangerous for climbers in recent years.
Climbers in the Himalaya noted similar changes in the Karakoram. For Adriana Brownlee's ascent of Dhaulagiri last year, getting to the summit was the easy part. But a melting mountain made the descent hellish, she said.
“The mountain was a melting pot, a vertical river pretty much,” Brownlee posted on social media.
The mayor of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, a village at the foot of Mont Blanc in France, is planning to charge climbers a deposit of €15,000 to reach the peak via the popular Goûter route. The reason? To cover rescue and funeral costs should things go wrong — as seems to be happening more often lately.
In a statement on August 3, Mayor Jean-Marc Peillex said the €15,000 sum comes from “€10,000 for the cost of a rescue, and €5,000 for the cost of a funeral.”
The decision reflects his defense of his taxpaying constituency.
It is “impermissible that the French taxpayer be the one to cover such costs,” he asserted.
#saintgervais #montblanc pic.twitter.com/dBOTZcdNG1
— Jean-Marc PEILLEX (@PEILLEX) August 3, 2022
This isn't the first time the Mayor of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains has publically dissuaded prospective Mont Blanc climbers. Earlier in the summer, he asked that climbers "listen to the mountain, not to want to be stronger than nature.”
#montblanc les alpinistes doivent renoncer à leur projet d’ascension par la voie royale du Gouter à #saintgervais pic.twitter.com/92HInWTAVR
— Jean-Marc PEILLEX (@PEILLEX) July 16, 2022
In his statement Wednesday, Pelleix noted that several dozen “pseudo-alpinists” have sought to climb Mont Blanc this summer regardless of the recommendations in place. Mountain rescue teams have counted at least 50 people who have defied local authorities’ recommendations, he said.
A popular — but dangerous — route
The Goûter route is one of Europe's most popular — and dangerous — mountaineering routes. Its relatively low technical difficulty tends to attract climbers who overestimate their skills.
And conditions on the mountain — and the Goûter in particular — are growing more and more dangerous as climate change wreaks havoc. Europe has experienced extreme heat all summer, leading to increased rockfall, landslides, and new crevasses on mountains across the continent.
The Compagnie des Guides des Chamonix has voluntarily ceased operating on the Goûter in response to the growing danger.
"Following a winter when it snowed little and a spring when it was already hot, the falls of stones at the Couloir du Goûter are already significant," said Olivier Greber, president of the Chamonix guide company, earlier this summer.
For now, the Goûter route and others like it around Europe remain — technically — open to climbing.
Even the Matterhorn is not an option.
The extraordinarily hot, dry conditions in the European Alps have turned the glacier areas and classic routes into deadly traps. Media around the world speak of "closed mountains". While the term is not accurate -- it's virtually impossible to ban climbers from a particular peak -- authorities and guides have had to make some tough decisions. They have shut refuges, canceled guided trips, and strongly recommended that climbers don't go on their own.
Classics out of reach
"Conditions are changing fast and not in a good way," reported the High Mountain Office of Chamonix on July 20. Back then, most guiding companies refused to take clients up Mont Blanc. Meanwhile, climbers turned back on dozens of other popular ascents, from the Aiguille Verte to the Grandes Jorasses, because of open crevasses and constant rockfall.
Even the bergschrund at the base of the Aiguille du Midi opens wider every day. Although local conditions change almost daily, high temperatures have given no respite to an already scorched Europe.
Last week, guides working on the Matterhorn (Cervino) between Switzerland and Italy and the Jungfrau at the Swiss Oberland decided to stop guiding these classic peaks as well, Barrabes.com reported.
Among the guided trips canceled are those to:
- Refuge Gouter on the normal route to Mont Blanc from France
- The Dente del Gigante (Dent du Géant or Giant's Tooth)
- The Matterhorn, either via the Hornli or Lion's Ridges (the normal routes from Switzerland and Italy)
-The Castor to Pollux traverse
Looking for alternatives
Nothing has improved since the decision came down a week ago. It's another blow to the guides and outfitters after two years of COVID restrictions.
Meanwhile, some guides are using ingenuity to give clients safer alternatives. For example, Pierrick Fine chose an old secondary route to the Dome de Neige des Ecrins. The once-straightforward line over a snowfield is now a trickly zigzag among crevasses and seracs. Instead, Fine chose a route that had not been used for the last 10 years, across rocky terrain up the northeast ridge of neighboring Barre Noire.
Caution beyond the glaciers too
Even if temperatures finally moderate, conditions throughout the alpine will remain dicey and need careful assessment. Even rocky areas near the glaciers slide frequently now. The permafrost is melting, and the scree may slough off, destabilizing entire slopes and exposing the fossil ice below.
For updates, contact the mountain huts and guiding offices. The final decision lies with the climber, but be warned that formerly easy routes may now involve serious exposure. Finally, consider your travel insurance policy: Accidents might not be covered if someone ventures into an area against the authorities' advice.
Co-credit: KrisAnnapurna
A falling serac killed at least six people today on 3,343m Marmolada, the highest peak in the Italian Dolomites. Another dozen are missing.
The tragedy occurred after large chunks of the Marmolada Glacier broke loose at two different points. It triggered an ice avalanche about 300m wide that swept across the normal ascent route, affecting an estimated two dozen weekend climbers. Many observers in the area filmed the event.
#Marmolada nelle immagini @TgrRaiTrentino il crollo del costone pic.twitter.com/DnckWWEjNM
— Alessandro Casarin (@casarinale58) July 3, 2022
The collapse occurred at 2 pm below Punta Rocca, at 3,250m. Shortly before, the temperature registered a record 10.3ºC at the summit. The avalanche of ice and rock fell on the stretch between Pian dei Fiacconi and Punta Penia, La Repubblica reported.
Evacuation: further falls expected
A rescue operation began immediately, with five helicopters and ground searches with dogs, despite the risk of further avalanches. So far, six bodies have been recovered from the chaos of ice blocks. The search continues for other victims.
Preliminary estimates suggest that 10 to 12 people remain missing. At least eight others have been rescued and brought by air to nearby hospitals, Italy's National Mountain Rescue Corps reported. Two of the victims had serious injuries.
Everyone in the area, including those staying in mountain huts, has been evacuated before further falls occur.
In winter, Marmolada is easily accessible from two nearby ski resorts. In summer, an easy glacier trek up its north side draws crowds of climbers.
Temperatures have been remarkably high in the central European ranges of late. The summit of Marmolada basked in a record +10ºC on Saturday. Today, it edged even a shade higher. This follows a remarkably dry winter, which has left the alpine glaciers bare of snow. The exposed, hard, fossil ice makes the climbs particularly hazardous.
As the climate warms, the dangers on glaciers and steep, snowy mountains increase. What will this mean to the future of climbing on Everest?
Recently, the BBC reported that Nepal is preparing to move Everest Base Camp down the valley. Its current location, on the thinning Khumbu Glacier, is becoming too dangerous. And there are other problems.
The void beneath
Nepal's Department of Tourism are currently studying the alternative location, 200 to 400m lower down, on solid ground.
So far, the canvas town that is Everest base Camp spreads over rough glacier terrain, amid ice, rocks, bumps, cracks, and shallow holes that turn into ponds on sunny days, then freeze up again at night.
The location is no minor question since Everest Base Camp usually hosts around 1,500 people. In addition, a lower start would severely affect the expeditions' tactics and logistics.
Icefall shakes more than ever
As the Khumbu Glacier thins, the Icefall between Base Camp and Camp 1 becomes more unstable. As the BBC reported, higher temperatures create weaker snow bridges among crevasses, and crevasses appear more often. Some climbers fear that a crevasse might open up beneath them as they sleep in their tents.
Taranath Adhikari, director-general of Nepal's tourism department, hinted to the BBC that the move could take place in 2024.
Nivesh Karki of Pioneer Adventure confirmed to ExplorersWeb that no decision has been made yet. The outfitter says that local climbers tell him that the Khumbu Icefall seems to be "shaking more" this year than previously. Nevertheless, the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC) believes that the route through the Icefall will be safe "for a few more years".
Among other things, the SPCC hires the Ice Doctors who open and maintain the route through the Khumbu Icefall to C1 on the Western Cwm every season. But according to the BBC, the SPCC has only ensured that the Icefall will be available for three or four more years, which is really not much.
Moving -- but where?
"Not sure where they’re proposing to put [Base Camp]," British guide Tim Mosedale wrote recently. "But it will undoubtedly [take much longer] to get to C1 and C2…not only for climbers but also for the Sherpa staff who undertake the journey a dozen or more times a season.
"Some climbers take 14 to 20 hours to do their second rotation from EBC to C2, so there are significant repercussions if the journey is extended much longer," Mosedale added.
Uncertain alternatives
"If EBC is moved, it wouldn’t surprise me if an Advanced Base Camp is established at around 5,350m, just at the bottom of the Khumbu Icefall," Mosedale said.
Alternately, climbers could change strategy and acclimatize first on trekking peaks, then move all the way to Camps 1 or 2 to await their summit push. Helicopters would be used to better supply the camps on the Western Cwm and the Valley of Silence, and to airlift workers (camp crew, guides, and rope fixers).
Helicopters are only supposed to carry supplies and workers and evacuate sick or injured climbers. But on some occasions, they have reportedly shuttled to C1 rich clients who wanted to avoid the perils of the Icefall.
However, there are serious downsides to creating a new ABC. As it is, Everest can barely maintain its current number of visitors. All the overcrowding and environmental impact would simply migrate up the glacier, to even more fragile areas. The increasingly complex waste management, the luxuries that teams have grown used to, the huge camps...
At 6,400m, this would be far more than the mountain could endure. It could lead to a radically diminished number of permits. Logistics might return to minimalistic.
Whatever happens, helicopters shouldn't be an option for the climbers themselves, if they still want to be called by that name. A complete Everest climb must begin at the base of the mountain, not midway, so there would be no point in starting from 6,400m.
Besides, the top of the Icefall is not the end of the bad news.
Good weather, bad news
The 2022 season featured an extraordinarily long period of excellent weather. This gave everyone on the mountain a chance to summit and led to a high percentage of success. Yet this might not be all good news, once we consider climate change.
High temperatures often increase the objective difficulties and risks on the highest peaks, especially on Everest.
"It is concerning for the future," Lukas Furtenbach told ExplorersWeb. Besides an Everest outfitter, Furtenbach is also a geographer, specializing in gravitational processes, climate change, and risk management of natural hazards at the University of Innsbruck.
Challenges ahead
"Exceptional warm temperatures with melting water (!) at the South Col and the absence of the jet stream show the speed and extent of the effects of global warming on the highest mountains," he told ExplorersWeb. "We will face completely new challenges climbing Everest in the near future."
He listed some future effects of climate change on Everest:
- The Khumbu Icefall will become more unstable, and move faster, with more gravity- and temperature-triggered events.
- More avalanches from Nuptse and Everest's West Shoulder can reach both the climbing route and Camps 1 and 2.
- More and larger crevasses in the Western Cwm and on the Lhotse Face.
- The whole Southeast Ridge and summit ridge could become unstable, with more crevasses on the ridge and on the lower glacier leading to the Balcony. All the rocky sections will become more unstable.
- More cyclones in the Bay of Bengal because of more heat (energy) in the atmosphere. This means more cyclones hitting Everest, bringing heavy snowfall. This in turn leads to more avalanches because of the warm temperatures.
The China option?
Some might argue that Everest's overcrowding might decrease once China re-opens the north side to foreign expeditions and visitors distribute themselves on both sides of the mountain. However, it is yet unclear if, when, and most of all, how is China going to manage the access to their prized side of Everest. The crowding problem may only spread to the north side as well.
If current climate trends continue, scaling Everest will become more hazardous, more expensive, and more limited. This will affect not only those who dream of an Everest summit among their life accomplishments but also the thousands of families in Nepal who depend on income from tourism.
The Goûter Route on Mont Blanc (4,808m) above Chamonix, France sees thousands of ascents per year. Often called one of the two “normal routes” on Europe’s highest peak, its relatively low technical difficulty makes it popular among mountaineers of all skill levels.
But a new geological development near the peak may make the Goûter a lot more prohibitive. Recently, a massive crevasse opened up high on the route’s summit ridgeline. Traversing the area previously required a trek through an unassuming snowfield. Now, it’s a potentially dangerous alpine puzzle of steep, 10m walls and snow bridges.
A team of scientists and aspiring mountain guides climbed to the Bosses ridge to survey the change. They found a huge trench 16m wide, 16m deep, and 130m long. (Swipe left below for visuals).
Giant crack complicates climbing on Mont Blanc
Xavier Cailhol, Ludovic Ravanel, and Jacques Mourey wrote an article that seeks to determine how the crevasse system got there and to explore its implications for mountaineers.
With aerial photos, mapping, and direct observation, scientists found that the terrain barely changed from 2000 to 2019. Then, it started widening rapidly. As of now, delicate, shifting bridges facilitate the best passage.
Result? “This sector makes the ascent of Mont Blanc more technically difficult and requires great caution,” the article’s authors assess.
The area covers terrain just under the Tournette Spur, between 4,594m and 4,650m. The crack opened significantly this past winter, and guides are skeptical whether heavy snowfall will fill it for the summer climbing season. Even if it does fill back in, it may still be more dangerous than before.
Its current condition “means that the route is more technical than usual at this point. On this normal route, we tend to trivialize the fact of being in glacial zones,” Cailhol told Alpine Mag, noting that he didn’t always rope up for the section on previous trips. “What the presence of these snow bridges implies is a problem of mountaineering progression in the strict sense.”
What's this thing doing here?
The team studied several hypotheses in search of the phenomenon’s origin. The most likely would be that the Bossons Glacier is a "slope glacier" whose downstream part is at 0°C. At its base, liquid water allows it to glide over rock. The upstream region is colder — ice well below zero, which can stick to the rock. They hypothesize that with climate change, the glacier could be warming up, allowing some parts to slide faster. As a result, new fissures open.
The team says it will carry out ongoing measurements on Mont Blanc to follow the crevasse system’s evolution and better understand how it formed.
Cailhol acknowledged that it’s unclear how conditions on the glacier will affect climbing this summer. He admits that it’s a sketchy proposition now, “when you see the size of this crevasse, how open it is and the shape it has.”
He added: “In the best case, the impact will be minor this summer, but going solo in the current state of things, you really have to be daring.”
Train schedule adjusts
Considering the added danger from the glacier and surrounding rock’s increased activity, the Mont Blanc Express train schedule will change. From July 9-August 28, the train will leave at 7 am from St. Gervais/Le Fayet in Chamonix, instead of the usual 8 am. The earlier time benefits mountaineers by helping them to cross the Goûter Couloir -- colorfully known as the Corridor of Death -- when the probability of rockfall is lower.
Climate scientists have published a groundbreaking study on the degradation of glaciers in the Hindu Kush and the Himalaya, including Everest (8,849m). It revealed a rapid and accelerating melt-off at the top of the world.
Few studies exist about how rising global temperatures affect the world's highest ranges. To bridge this gap, scientists went to the Nepalese side of Everest in spring 2019. They did in-depth studies of biology, geology, glaciology, and meteorology. They reported their findings this week in Nature Portfolio Journal Climate and Atmospheric Science.
Everest South Col glacier dwindling rapidly
The team installed Earth's two highest weather stations on the South Col Glacier and pulled an ice core sample. They found that this glacier is losing ice 80 times faster than it took to build up. That amounts to a loss of 2,000 years' worth of ice in just 25 years. The rate of degradation continues to increase. Currently, the glacier is shedding several decades of ice annually.
Among other things, the study concludes that the glaciers aren't safe anywhere on the mountain. Strong winds at high, dry altitudes lead to more sublimation, though less melt-off. Increased humidity at lower altitudes lessens sublimation, but then melt increases in the warmer air.
"[This study] answers one of the big questions...whether the highest glaciers on the planet are impacted by human-sourced climate change," said glaciologist Paul Mayewski. "The answer is a resounding yes, and very significantly since the late 1990s."
On January 13, at the coldest time of year, Stefano Gregoretti and Dino Lanzaretti began a 2,000km expedition through Siberia.
The journey is split into two legs. Currently, they are cycling 1,200km, in temperatures as low as -60°C, from Oymyakon to Verkhoyansk. The two villages are the two coldest settlements in the world. Then in summer, they will stand up paddleboard 750km along the Yena River from Verkhoyansk to the Arctic Ocean.
They have named their challenge Siberia 105° to highlight the 105°C temperature range now experienced in Siberia because of climate change. In winter, the temperature in Verkhoyansk can plummet to -67°C, while last summer, it rose to 38°C.
Although that part of Siberia is known for its large temperatures fluctuations because of the continental climate, no one has ever experienced such a drastic and destruction range. Scorching summers have caused wildfires that don't die out, even in winter. The permafrost is thawing, destabilizing the structures built on top of it. It also releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The Italian duo arrived in Siberia on January 7. Six days later, they began their journey. Pedaling through Oymyakon, they stopped at the marker known as the Pole of Cold. Oymyakon holds the record for the lowest temperature in the northern hemisphere ever recorded: -71°C.
The Keeper of the Cold
At the monument, they met a flamboyant character known as Chryskhan, the Keeper of the Cold.
In 2014, another Western visitor, Felicity Aston, explained the Keeper's significance:
"Striding around the monument was a figure clad in a magnificent floor-length coat of shimmering blue trimmed with white fur and studded with colorful beads that tinkled like broken ice when he moved," she wrote. "Wearing a headdress in the shape of entwined bull horns, he carried a staff decorated with white horsehair. He introduced himself to us as Chyskhan, the Lord Keeper of the Cold.
"In Yakutian mythology, Chyskhan is responsible for distributing winter across the globe. Every autumn, a dozen or so of the 25 official Santa Claus equivalents from various cultures around the world gather in Oymyakon to collect symbols of cold from Chyskhan. They return in spring to hand back the tokens."
Early problems
Unofficial send-off aside, the first few days of the Italians' expedition have not been easy. Problems soon began with the gearbox on Lanzaretti’s bike. They had to take it apart and reassemble it -- no easy matter in those temperatures.
At least, the pair are experienced in the cold. In 2017, Lanzaretti cycled across Siberia in winter. And Gregoretti is an endurance athlete who has covered many kilometres in extreme cold and cycled through the Canadian Arctic.
Scientists have discovered a newly established colony of 75 gentoo penguin chicks on little Andersson Island in Antarctica. It is the first documented gentoo migration to the archipelago, an unusually southern location for the breed.
Gentoo penguins are inclined to relatively temperate, ice-free zones. Until recently, conditions within Andersson Island's latitudinal band were too icy for gentoo chicks. Similar migratory trends observed with other species suggest that the birds are responding to fast-rising global temperatures.
Antarctica and climate change
The Antarctic Peninsula is one of Earth's most rapidly warming regions. Temps there have risen 3° C on average since the early 1970s. What may seem like a minor increase has already proven catastrophic for the area's fauna and flora.
Elimination of livable terrain through industrial fishing, glacial calving, and rising sea levels, as well as the sweating-out of sensitive species, has resulted in monumental habitat losses and food chain disruptions. A recent expedition to Elephant Island found that chinstrap penguin colonies had collapsed by as much as 77% in 50 years.
Gentoo penguins as climate sentinels
Though research on Andersson Island's fledgling penguin colony has just begun, experts say the reason for the bird's uncharacteristic migration is apparent. The gentoo penguin was expelled from a region they've inhabited for millennia by a very sharp and fast uptick in atmospheric heat. The same warming effect also morphed an intractable polar region into a relatively hospitable landing for the flightless birds — at least for now.
The discovery has spurred renewed calls from the scientific community to establish a network for marine protected areas in Antarctica to help safeguard the region in the face of a rapidly changing climate.
"Penguins are a sentinel species and a great indicator of the health of the Antarctic ecosystem," stated the expedition's lead ecologist, Dr. Heather Lynch. "As expected, we're finding gentoo penguins nearly everywhere we look –- more evidence that climate change is drastically changing the mix of species here on the Antarctic Peninsula."
A passion for the natural world drives many of our adventures. And when we’re not actually outside, we love delving into the discoveries about the places where we live and travel. Here are some of the best natural history links we’ve found this week.
Ocean secrets
Sea dragon skeleton found in the UK: Conservationists have found the fossilized remains of an ichthyosaur at the bottom of a reservoir in England. The “sea dragon” is one of the largest and most complete skeletons of the species found to date.
The conservationists were draining Rutland Water Nature Reserve as part of a landscaping project when they stumbled across the remains in 2021. “We sort of looked at it and scratched our heads…we could see these ridges and bumps. That’s when alarm bells started to ring,” said Mr. Davis. He took photos and sent them over to the geology department at the University of Leicester. “I immediately recognized them as ichthyosaur vertebrae,” said Dr. Lomax, who went on to lead the excavation.
Ichthyosaurs were marine reptiles that first appeared 250 million years ago. This skeleton dates back 180 million years, to the early Jurassic period. The intact skeleton amazed Paleontologists, they had expected to only find fragments. Icy conditions meant they were unable to extract the skeleton, so they covered it with plastic sheets and mud and then returned in August. Researchers are now preserving the skeleton and removing rocks from the bones.
World’s largest fish breeding ground discovered: Scientists have discovered the world’s largest fish breeding ground in Antarctica. Marine biologists discovered approximately 60 million icefish nests on the floor of the Weddell Sea. Each nest contains up to 2,500 eggs.
Scientists started exploring the Weddell Sea in the 1980s but found only small clusters of nests previously. A German research vessel found the huge expanse of nests whilst conducting routine observations. “The idea that such a huge breeding area of icefish in the Weddell Sea was previously undiscovered is totally fascinating,” says Dr. Autun Purser. Scientists are calling for governments to create a Marine Protected Area to safeguard the breeding grounds.
Warrior women
Remains of 3,000-year-old warrior women found in Armenia: Three millennia ago, many civilizations across the Mediterranean collapsed. Archeologists have now discovered the remains of two female warriors in the Jrapi cemetery, Armenia. Initially, they assumed the skeletons were male as they were buried like honored warriors. Testing has proved they were women.
Both women would have been horse-riding warriors who fought for their communities. Their remains show that both women experienced significant trauma before they died. The first skeleton is of a 45 to 50-year-old woman; she had a dent in the back of her skull. The arrow that killed her was still lodged in her ribcage. The second woman was much younger. She had been shot in the ankle, stabbed in the jaw, and had blunt force dents in the back of her head.
A new frog and ageless ants
New Rainfrog species discovered in Panama: You can find Rainfrogs across South America, with a few species present in Central America. There are 574 known species of these often-colorful frogs, but they are relatively understudied. Their variation in color and morphology can make it difficult for biologists to decipher between species by sight alone.
Scientists have found a previously unknown species of rainfrog in Panama. They have named it Pristimantis Gretathunbergae after climate activist Greta Thunberg.
The never-aging ants with a terrible secret: In the forests of Germany a group of ants has done the seemingly impossible, they have stopped the aging process. While some temnothorax ants in the colony age as normal and die after a few months, some live for years. These ants maintain the soft outer shells and tawny shading signifying a juvenile. All these ageless ants have one thing in common, their bellies are teeming with tapeworms.
The parasites prolong the lifespan of their host dramatically. Researchers think the affected ants can live for over a decade. The temnothorax ants become host to the parasites when they ingest bird feces containing tapeworm eggs as larvae. Researchers found that the tapeworm-infected ants also did less work than other ants in the colony. The normal ants treated them as juveniles and groomed, fed, and carried them around due to their youthful appearance.
Climate change is destabilizing the Arctic
Climate change destroying homes across the Arctic: The Arctic is warming two to four times faster than the rest of the planet. The rising temperature is causing permafrost to thaw across Russia, North America, and Scandinavia. This poses a huge problem for the five million people who live on the Arctic permafrost.
The usually frozen ground is forming sinkholes. Landslides and flooding are becoming more common. Studies suggest that 70% of existing infrastructure is at high risk of damage by 2050. Across communities on the permafrost, water mains are rupturing, houses are becoming unstable, and ponds are forming due to all the meltwater. "If you think about the Arctic, landscape stability is dependent on the threshold of zero degrees Celsius. And as the ground temperature approaches zero, we are seeing huge waves of problems," said Arctic geologist Louise Farquharson.
Could a clone bring this ferret species back from the brink?
Cloned ferret celebrates first birthday: Elizabeth-Ann, the world’s first cloned black-footed ferret, has celebrated her first birthday. This is a major milestone for conservationists; the little ferret is one of the first clones to reach sexual maturity.
Black-footed ferrets are one of the most endangered species in North America. Conservationists plan to mate Elizabeth-Ann in spring. If she gives birth to healthy kits it will be the first time cloning has been successfully used to try and save a species from extinction. If successful it opens the door to use the technique on other endangered species, but if it fails the team worries it will boost skepticism about the value of cloning. “Everything about Elizabeth Ann is much bigger than the science behind it, and it’s much bigger than helping the ferrets,” says Ben Novak.
Scientists cloned Elizabeth-Ann using cells of a female ferret that died over three decades ago. Scientists classed the species as endangered in 1973. Their numbers fell dramatically in the 1970s after prairie dog colonies and their burrows were almost wiped out by farmers and ranchers. Prairie dogs are a crucial prey species for the ferrets.
A passion for the natural world drives many of our adventures. And when we’re not actually outside, we love delving into the discoveries about the places where we live and travel. Here are some of the best natural history links we’ve found this week.
Snow is glowing in the Russian Arctic: Biologist Vera Emelianenko was at a field station in the Russian Arctic, near the White Sea, when she noticed something peculiar. The snow was glowing. Footprints in the snow turned blue. She made a snowball in her hand, and as she squeezed, it glowed brighter. Under a microscope, she discovered copepods that displayed bioluminescence when you disturbed them. Solving one mystery created another. These copepods do not live near the shores of the White Sea but in open water. They spend daylight hours up to 100m below the surface. Scientists think that they were caught in powerful currents and swept ashore. Copepods are passive swimmers: Unable to resist currents, they would have no way of returning to the sea.
Coral reefs in Nevada
Fossils from the world’s first reefs found on mountains in Nevada: In the mountains of Nevada, you can find the fossilized ruins of ancient coral reefs. It seems impossible to imagine an underwater ecosystem not far from Death Valley, an area known for its almost unbearable temperatures. But 520 million years ago, the Cambrian explosion brought with it an abundance of life, and the mountains were the seafloor. In this ancient sea, animal-built reefs flourished. “You’re in the desert walking around on mountains, but at the same time you feel like you’re scuba diving,” says paleontologist Emmy Smith. To passersby, the rocks look like just rocks. You need a microscope to discern evidence of these remarkable organisms.
Himalayan Glaciers melting at an exceptional rate: Glaciers in the Himalaya are shrinking more quickly than those in other parts of the world. In the last few decades, they have lost ice 10 times more quickly than in the last 150 years. Their area has receded by 40%. The new findings are not just another reminder of human-induced climate change; they have serious implications. The loss of the glacial ice threatens a water supply that millions of people across Asia rely upon.
Dinosaur embryo found inside a fossilized egg: Researchers discovered a well-preserved dinosaur embryo inside a fossilized egg. The egg was in storage for 10 years and rediscovered when boxes of fossils were being sorted for a new Natural History Museum in China. The embryo is an oviraptorosaur, part of the theropod group of dinosaurs. The embryo displayed a tucking posture in the egg. Scientists thought this behavior was unique to birds. Interestingly, birds are originally descendants of theropods.
An abundance of shrews
Fourteen new species of shrew discovered: Scientists have found 14 new species of shrew on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia. They examined 1,368 specimens and found evidence of 21 separate species. Seven of these have been previously identified. There are now 461 known species of shrew across the world. Though it was exciting to discover so many new species, scientists also said it was quite overwhelming. Studying the specimens took eight years, and for most of that, the number of distinct species was unclear.
Preserving the 'Last Ice Area'
Can scientists develop an icy sanctuary for arctic life? Polar bears are struggling to cope in the ever-warming Arctic. They also faced extinction 130,000 years ago, but they bounced back after the warming period ended. This knowledge has prompted an ambitious plan. Scientists want to create a sanctuary for ice-dependent species in the area known as ‘the Last Ice Area’. Computer modeling suggests this area will retain its sea ice indefinitely if the planet doesn’t warm more than 2˚C above pre-industrial levels. If successful, this summer ice will serve as a floating refuge that is legally protected against commercial activities.
Why reindeer are perfect to pull Santa’s sleigh: Reindeer are crucial to the success of Santa Claus. But why did he choose them to pull his sleigh over every other animal? The biology of reindeer makes them perfect for the job. Living in the Arctic, they can withstand temperatures well below -30˚C. They have two layers of fur, and one square centimetre can have over 2,000 hairs. Unlike many other arctic animals, they don’t need to store lots of fat. They feast on reindeer lichen, which is plentiful throughout winter. They are one of the only known mammals able to digest this food source. Reindeer can see in ultraviolet and are some of the only mammals that have evolved this ability. In winter, their eyes change color from gold to blue, adapting to the shorter daylight hours. The ability to see in the dark makes them perfect for guiding a sleigh at night.
A passion for the natural world drives many of our adventures. And when we’re not actually outside, we love delving into the discoveries about the places where we live and travel. Here are some of the best natural history links we’ve found this week.
NASA spacecraft touches the sun: Last April, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft to ‘touch’ the sun, scientists just announced. The spacecraft reached the corona, the sun’s upper surface. NASA launched the probe in 2018. With every orbit of the sun, it inched closer. It finally crossed into the outer atmosphere on April 28 and remained there for five hours. The probe's composition of tungsten, niobium, molybdenum, and sapphire allows it to cope with the intense temperature. "The goal of this entire mission is to learn how the Sun works. We can accomplish this by flying into the solar atmosphere," says astrophysicist Michael Stevens. In total, the probe will approach the sun 24 times. In 2025, it will get even closer, four million miles away. Although that sounds far, one expert explained, “If the sun is at the endzone of a football field, Parker will be at the four-yard line.”
Meerkat matriarch, high on testosterone, bullies underlings
Testosterone drives meerkat status: Testosterone Is crucial to the evolution of meerkat societies. Every meerkat gang has a clear leader, a matriarch. New research shows that the matriarch's control depends almost entirely on her having very high levels of testosterone. The matriarch stops other females in her gang from reproducing, often attacks other pregnant meerkats or kills their pups so that the other females give her pups their undivided attention. They also push, shove, bite, and growl to show their dominance. "In non-pregnant matriarchs, testosterone values are equivalent to the males', and just a little bit lower [than] subordinate females. But when matriarchs get pregnant, they ramp up," said Christine Drea of Duke University. In one experiment, researchers treated matriarchs with flutamide, which suppresses testosterone. They almost immediately lost their edge, and their subordinates became less deferential.
Hydroelectric dams linked to tiger and jaguar losses: Dam construction has affected one-fifth of the world's remaining tigers. Thousands of dams intersect the ranges of tigers and jaguars, and over 13,000 square kilometres of their habitat have been flooded to create reservoirs for the dams. Tigers have now disappeared from 90% of their former range, and this is quickening their decline. "Without these reservoirs, the tiger population today could be 20% larger," said researcher Luke Gibson.
Viking exodus pinned to swamped coastline
Sea level rise drove Vikings out of Greenland: Ice sheet growth and sea-level rise led to the coastal flooding that drove the Vikings out of Greenland in the 15th century. The Vikings first appeared in southern Greenland around A.D. 985, but in the 15th century, all signs of them disappear from archaeological records. Researchers thought that climate change and economic shifts caused this. New findings suggest that rising seas submerged miles of coastline and caused the exodus of the Vikings.
Robofish thwarts an invasive fish: Mosquitofish are native to western and south-eastern America. In the 20th century, they were released into freshwater ecosystems around the world in a misguided effort to control malaria outbreaks. The little fish typically eats mosquito larvae. Instead, the introduced fish mostly ate the eggs of native fish and amphibians. They have no natural predators in these areas and threw ecosystems into chaos. They have become one of the world’s most destructive invasive species. To combat the invasion, scientists have created a robotic fish that mimics the mosquito fish's natural predators. This robofish causes increased fear and stress in the mosquitofish, reducing their survival and reproduction success.
A millipede that actually has 1,000 legs
The first true millipede: The first millipede with more than 1,000 legs has been discovered in Western Australia. The millipede turned up during an environmental impact assessment in a mining area in the Eastern Goldfields region. A species in central California with 750 legs held the previous record. The new species has been named Eumillipes persephone, after Persephone, the Greek goddess of the underworld. The creature has 1,306 legs, a long, thread-like body with 330 segments, and a cone-shaped head. "As soon as I realized how long they were…I knew they had to be something completely different,” said researcher Bruno Buzatto.
Brazil wildfires killed 17 million animals: Between January and November 2020, wildfires raged across Brazil. In total, these wildfires destroyed 30% of the tropical wetlands often touted as the “lungs of the earth”. New reports estimate that 17 million vertebrates, including reptiles, birds, and primates perished. The 22,000 fires were very different from those typical to the region. They were so unusual because of their much greater size and because they were clearly linked to the mega-drought in the area at that time. "The Pantanal can't keep burning to this huge extent year after year,” said ecologist Alex Lees. "Biodiversity can't recover from that."