14 August 2003

The brutal heatwave sweeping Europe is causing havoc across the continent, with fires destroying large forest areas of southern France and Portugal. In the Alps the heat is melting glaciers at an alarming rate, swelling lakes and rivers to the point where some communities are actually draining their lakes to make room for all the run-off.

Matterhorn evacuated
As Swiss temperatures hit their highest for 200 years - reaching 37 degrees - helicopters moved about 70 people from the Matterhorn after a rock face crumbled at 3,400m down the mountain on the Swiss-Italian border. Consequently, Switzerland's most famous mountain was been closed over fears further melting could cause massive rock slides in the main climbing season.

"At the moment we are advising against climbing on the Matterhorn - it would be pure suicide," said Miggi Biner, the president of the mountaineering society in nearby Zermatt. Biner said the mountain would remain closed until further notice as geologists assess the likelihood of further slides.

Experts said that the hot weather was a major factor behind Tuesday's slide, after it partially melted the permafrost which binds together much of the surface of the 4,478m peak. Even though the Matterhorn was reopened, an Alpine gondola near Mont Blanc was shut down for two days amid fears that an ice tunnel it passes through may collapse.

Threatened floods
In Italy, hundreds of emergency workers are struggling to prevent a picturesque ski resort in the Italian Alps from being engulfed by the waters of a new lake created by a melting glacier.The glacial lake, nick-named 'Ephemera', was discovered by chance on June 21 during a routine air patrol of the Belvedere Glacier on Mount Rosa, the second highest Alpine peak. The village of Macugnaga sits 3,300 feet below the rapidly rising pool of 900 million gallons of water which now covers 30 acres.

There are two fears: that the lake will burst and send a lethal torrent of water onto Macugnaga or that the pressure of the build-up will force part of the glacier to break away and plunge down the mountainside into the village. In a region still haunted by the Vajont dam disaster of 1963, when more than 2,000 people were swept to their deaths, the discovery of Ephemera raised immediate alarm.The Italian government declared a state of emergency and sent 200 soldiers, civil protection officers, firemen and volunteers and six helicopters to the area, 7,500ft above sea level. They are attempting to drain the lake with a giant water pump to save Macugnaga from inundation.

The glacier is melting at an unprecedented rate - a phenomenon attributed to a summer heatwave in the Alps coupled with rising average temperatures.The emergency operation is being undertaken in formidable surroundings as the glacier can only be reached by helicopter. Three giant pumps have already been flown to the site - powered by a 1.5-mile cable run down the mountain - and another three are due to be installed this weekend.

Glacial melt rate increasing
The emergency has drawn attention to the plight of Europe's glaciers. The Italian Glaciological Committee estimates that the country's glaciers are 20 per cent smaller than they were in 1987, and that Alpine glaciers in general have lost 40 per cent of their volume in the past century. Italy is said to have 800 such "seasonal lakes", while similar ones to Ephemera exist in the Himalayas and the Andes.

Patrick Wagnon, a specialist in tropical glaciers from the Research Institute for Development in France, said it was the first time in Europe that a glacier had behaved in this way."At the foot of Mount Rosa the topology is particularly flat and doesn't allow the water to run away which explains the rapid formation of this lake," he said. "This lake is a consequence of both the heatwave and global warming which has made the problem worse.

[Source: Ski Press Magazine]

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