In a turn-up for the books a recent study in New Zealand had bucked the global warming trend to show that the NZ Alps are growing, rather than melting.

State-of-the-art measuring instruments placed in Mount Cook National Park two years ago have been battered by the weather, but shows a peak growth rate of 8mm per year.

John Beaven of the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS) will present a short paper on mountain-growth research to the Western Pacific Geophysics Conference in Wellington next week. The conference has been organised by the American Geophysical Union and will attract up to 700 international scientists.

"We are very pleased to be able to get some reliable information after two years. We were fearing that it would take five years to get any sort of an answer," Dr Beavan said yesterday.

The world-first research is a joint project between GNS, Otago University's surveying department, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Colorado.

Mount Cook airport engineers and Carol Scott, of Pinegrove Motels on the West Coast, have been helping maintain data flow, Dr Beavan said.

Ms Scott has replaced equipment damaged by lightening on the western side of the alps, while instruments on the Annette Plateau were buried by snow last year, depriving the scientists of about two months' data.

[Source: NZPA]

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