MELS, SWITZERLAND - Dozens of people will undertake a"funeral march" up a steep Swiss mountainside on Sunday to mark the disappearance of an Alpine glacier amid growing global alarm over climate change.
Dressed in black, they will make the solemn two-hour"funeral march" up the side of Pizol mountain in northeastern Switzerland to the foot of the steep and rapidly melting ice formation, situated at an altitude of around 2,700 metres near the Liechtenstein and Austrian borders. The move comes after Iceland made global headlines last month with a large ceremony and the laying of a bronze plaque to commemorate Okjokull, the island's first glacier lost to climate change.
Pizol may not be the first glacier to vanish in Switzerland, but"you could say it is the first to disappear that has been very thoroughly studied", said Huss, who will participate in Sunday's ceremony. REFERENDUM It has figured among some 4,000 glaciers - vast, ancient reserves of ice - dotted throughout the Alps, providing seasonal water to millions and forming some of Europe's most stunning landscapes.
And in a subsequent study published earlier this month, the researchers indicated that the Alps' largest glacier, the mighty Aletsch, could completely disappear over the next eight decades.