WARMING MAKES PREDICTING ALPINE AVALANCHES HARDER
01.29.07 - Leído 159 veces. Enviar esta notaWinter temperatures are rising steadily across the European Alps but snow volumes have varied wildly, making it harder to assess the risk of avalanches, a Swiss climate expert said on Friday
DAVOS, Switzerland; January 29, 2007.- Climatologist Christoph Marty said the cold winds and snow that greeted more than 2,000 members of the world’s political and business elites in Davos this week masked a clear warming trend in the region, where winter had a very mild start.
A reduction in snow cover generally means that the danger of avalanches decreases, but Marty said increased variability of snowfall made it hard to predict.
The Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research expert said the warmest five Alpine winters over the past 70 years — when reliable measurements started — have taken place in the past 15 years, and snowfall has varied greatly.
“It is very obvious that it is getting warmer and warmer, especially here in the Alps in the winter. The variability of snowfall is much higher than the temperature,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview from his office in Davos.
“So far we have had one of the snow-poorest winters since measurements started. Before this snowfall, it was among the bottom five (years),” he said of the 2006-07 season, which has seen major Alpine ski races cancelled due to lack of snow.
Famed for its high-altitude skiing, Davos claims to be the highest town in Europe at 1,500 metres above sea level. Marty said lower-altitude locations showed a clear downward trend in the number of days with snow cover in the past 70 years.
This has generally decreased avalanche risks in such areas, although Marty stressed that precipitation shifts meant that heavy snowfall could — perhaps at rare intervals — trigger large avalanches.
Such variability has made it hard for experts to predict how the Alps will react to continued global warming over the near-term, he said. “All the signs we see so far are that climate change will be accompanied by extremes, and by large variability in snowfall … You never know what is happening.”
(Reuters)
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