Risk of rockfalls surges as climate change thaws mountain ice

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New technologies are helping to detect more of the bigger landslides

As a scientist counts down “3-2-1”, five neon-coloured orbs are lowered from a helicopter hovering overhead and released. The orbs barrel down the Swiss mountain, toppling beech and spruce trees as they pick up speed.

The world was horrified in February, when a hunk of rock and ice broke from a Himalayan peak and swept down the mountain, killing more than 200 people and wiping out a hydroelectric dam in its path. “It was intense and emotional,” Sarbach recalled. “In the night you can see nothing. But you can hear the stones falling, and the water. And you smell the earth.”Scientists do not have much data on rockfalls, partly because they often happen in remote regions where few people live. New technologies are helping to detect more of the bigger rockfalls, though.

“In Switzerland, authorities would probably mobilise all resources to help you,” Petley said. “In Nepal, you are probably on your own.” One area of Alaska’s Saint Elias Mountains that typically sees six rock avalanches a year on average had a total of 41 during the unseasonably warm years of 2013-2016, according to a 2020 study published in the journal Frontiers in Earth Science.

“That is the worst-case scenario that haunts me a little bit,” said Ronald Daanen, a geohydrologist with the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

 

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