On May 28, the Swiss village of Blatten was devastated when a glacier collapsed, causing a landslide. Fortunately, the majority of the 300 residents had been evacuated the previous week; however, one man remains missing. The Birch glacier, above the village, crumbled from the weight of debris it accumulated. Experts are investigating the influence of climate change on such disasters, noting that global heating is causing glaciers to melt and become increasingly unstable, raising the risk of similar events in the future.
The Birch glacier, which sits above Blatten, is this ancient slab of ice, she tells Helen Pidd. It had been loaded up with rocks and debris from the mountain above and just gave way and crumbled.
What we can say is, basically, climate change is affecting all of the ingredients for a disaster like this.
So we're seeing glaciers around the world melt at an incredible rate. They're shrinking, they're cracking, they're growing more unstable.
We can't sort of say yes, the Birch glacier was climate change and climate change alone, but we can look at all of these factors, and all of them are related to global heating.
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