alps

Glacier Loss Day | Earth Wise

October 9, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Glaciers are sensitive indicators of climate change that respond to changes in both temperature and precipitation. But they are not only affected by climate change, they also affect climate change. As glaciers melt, they contribute to sea level rise, alter regional hydrology, and influence the global energy balance.

A group of glacier experts from the University of Innsbruck in Austria introduced a concept called “Glacier Loss Day” or GLD as a way to measure the annual mass balance of glaciers. Mass balance is the difference between the amount of snow and ice that accumulates on a glacier and the amount that melts or sublimates. If the mass balance is positive, the glacier is growing. If the mass balance is negative, the glacier is shrinking.

GLD is the day during the year when the glacier has lost all the mass it gained during previous winter. This is a similar concept to Earth Overshoot Day, which marks the date when humankind’s demand for ecological resources exceeds the amount the planet can regenerate during the year.

The Hintereisferner, a glacier in the Tyrolean Alps, has been monitored for more than 100 years and there are continuous records of its mass balance since 1952. In 2022, the GLD on the Hintereisferner was measured on the 23^rd of June. In the two previous years, it was reached in the middle of August. Even in years with large negative balances, such as 2003 and 2018, GLD did not occur until the end of July.

Every summer in the future may not be like 2022, but the trend is clear. Climate change is taking its toll on glaciers. Experts project that the Hintereisferner will lose half of its volume in the next 10 to 20 years.

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Glacier Loss Day indicates record breaking glacier melt

Photo, posted July 20, 2023, courtesy of Pedro Szekely via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Glacial Loss In The Swiss Alps | Earth Wise

December 14, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In 2022, glaciers in the Swiss Alps melted more than in any year on record. This is the latest piece of bad news for the country’s glaciers, which have lost more than half of their volume of ice since the 1930s.

The melting season for Switzerland’s snow and ice typically starts in May and ends in early October. This year’s melting season caused glaciers in the Diablerets mountain group to thin by an average of 13 feet, which is 3 times the amount of thinning observed over the past decade. The Tsanfleuron pass between two of the glaciers is now exposed as bare rock for the first time in several thousand years. Across Switzerland, glaciers lost about 6% of their remaining volume just this year. The previous worst year for glaciers was 2003, when losses were nearly 4%.

There was significant melting this year in part because of the small amount of snowfall over the winter. That snow melted quickly, being sped up by the warming effect of dust from the Sahara Desert falling on the snow. By early summer, there was no longer a protective blanket of snow on the glaciers, exposing them to summer heat.

The loss of glaciers is far more serious than the disappearance of aesthetically pleasing landscape features. Glaciers act as reservoirs of water that persist through the summer months. Melt from glaciers provides water to ecosystems and creates habitats for plants and animals. Cold runoff from glaciers affects downstream water temperatures which have a major impact on insects, fish, and other creatures. Globally, melting glaciers contribute more than 20% of the observed ongoing sea-level rise.

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Rocky Road for Swiss Glaciers

Photo, posted June 22, 2015, courtesy of Dennis Jarvis via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Pumped Hydro Storage In Switzerland | Earth Wise

September 15, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Pumped hydro energy storage is still by far the largest form of energy storage in the world, representing more than 90% of storage capacity worldwide. The theory behind it is simple. Water is pumped into an upper reservoir (that is, one at a higher elevation), and when electricity is needed, the water is allowed to flow downhill to power turbines and then is collected in a lower reservoir. When there is excess electricity, it is used to pump water back uphill for use later.

Pumped hydro installations can’t be built just anywhere. Geography and hydrology have to be suitable, which means high voltage transmission lines need to be constructed to link electricity sources like wind and solar farms with the storage location. But in those situations where pumped hydro makes sense, it is a great solution to the energy storage problem.

Switzerland has just completed one of the largest pumped hydro facilities in the world. The Nant de Drance installation makes use of the Emosson reservoir, which is an artificial lake built high in the Alps near the French border. Over the past 14 years, 10 miles of tunnels have been dug into the mountains to connect the Emosson reservoir to the Vieux Emosson reservoir to the south.

In between the two reservoirs is a giant underground cavern where six of the largest water-driven turbines in the world are spun from the water rushing down from above. The turbines have a capacity of 900 megawatts, making Nant de Drance one of the most powerful generating plants in Europe. In terms of storage capacity, the installation has a maximum capacity of 20 gigawatt-hours, and can store that energy indefinitely, which is challenging for other storage technologies.

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14 Years In The Making, 20 GWh Pumped Hydro Storage Facility Comes To Switzerland (With Video)

Photo, posted September 7, 2009, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Nanoplastics In The Air | Earth Wise

December 17, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The world is awash in plastic. Discarded plastic litters our roadways, woodlands, and beaches. It piles up in landfills. Plastic enters the oceans by the millions of tons. And plastic is finding its way even to remote and supposedly pristine parts of the world.

A team of researchers has found nanoplastics at the isolated high-altitude Sonnblick Observatory in the Austrian Alps. This is the first time the particles were found in the area. The researchers were looking for certain organic particles and only found the nanoplastics by chance.

The detected plastic particles were less than 200 nanometers in size, about one hundredth the width of a human hair. It is highly unlikely that such particles originated in remote Alpine areas.

The researchers were looking for organic particles by taking samples of snow or ice, evaporating them, and then burning the residue to detect and analyze the vapors. They described the detection method as essentially like a mechanical nose. In this case, the nose smelled burning plastics in the form of polypropylene and polyethylene terephthalate.

Looking into the issue, the researchers found a strong correlation between high concentrations of nanoplastics and winds coming from the direction of major European cities – especially Frankfurt and the industrial Ruhr area of Germany, but also the Netherlands, Paris, and even London.

Modeling supports the idea that nanoplastics are transported by air from distant urban places. This is particularly worrisome because it means that there are likely hotspots of nanoplastics in our cities and in the air that we are breathing. Plastics appear to be everywhere.

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Nanoplastics found in the Alps, transported by air from Frankfurt, Paris and London

Photo, posted July 1, 2013, courtesy of Robert J. Heath via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Return Of The Bald Ibis

September 6, 2018 By EarthWise 1 Comment

The northern bald ibis, also known as the waldrapp, is a strange-looking bird with a long, curved beak, a naked head, and feathers that point straight into the air like a Mohawk haircut. In former centuries, it occurred widely in northern and eastern Africa, Asia Minor, Arabia, and parts of Europe. The ancient Egyptians considered it to be an afterworld divinity and its likeness can be seen in hieroglyphs dating back thousands of years.