UKC

The summer of 2015 saw a major heatwave hit the Alps, making climbing conditions difficult and closing the Gouter hut on Mont Blanc for several weeks. Climate change is making such heatwaves more frequent and more severe. This article explains how climate change is affecting the experience of alpine climbing, and includes a trip report of an attempt to climb Mont Blanc during the recent heatwave.

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In reply to UKC Articles:

Good article on climate change. But I don’t see why the person with the green t-shirt is unroped on the Argentiere glacier?

In reply to UKC Articles:

A great read. Thanks Jonathan!

In reply to tistimetogo:
Because he is on a dry glacier - no snow to hide the crevasses.

In reply to UKC Articles:

Nice overview / trip report - I walked down to the Mer de Glace from Montenvers in the mid 90s. I hadn't been there for nearly 20 years.

Almost reflexively, I took the path to the right which was the old route down, resulting in confusion and consternation.
I retreated, puzzled, and then noticed the sign "to the refuges" which was the "new" route down. Much longer than the old route.

It's instructive to use Google Earth's historical image data to see where the snouts of glaciers used to be. The retreat, even in the brief 10 years that the imagery covers is sobering. As is the prominence of the glacial river on the surface of the Mer de Glace these days.

In reply to pneame:

I didn't visit Chamonix in summer between 1980 & (I think) 2007 and was amazed at the differences, even though I was aware that they had happened.

In reply to UKC Articles:

Fabulous article and photographs. It almost exactly parallels a Radio programme I made for BBC Radio 4 last year about the changes in the Gran Paradiso National Park. You can listen to it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04gypsg
What is striking is the silence bordering on "omertà'" (the famous sicilian code of silence) of the Italian Alpine Club which buries the changes to the mountains somewhere deep in its website.
The canary is dying and many don't lift a finger.

In reply to UKC Articles:

Two years ago we stopped off in Austria en-route to the Dolomites to do some alpine climbing. We tried three routes. On two of them we had to take a radically different approach to the mountain (via different valleys) because the approaches as described in our guide had been so badly affected by glacial retreat, on the third we couldn't climb the mountain at all because the glacier had completely melted leaving only a huge rubble filled couloir raked by rockfall so we had to climb a neighbouring peak via a pure rock route.
Three out of three routes radically altered by global warming.

On the other hand, whilst Chamonix was melting this summer, we were in Hurrungane, Norway's most alpine area and it was still a bit of a winter wonderland in August, all the crevasses were nicely filled making glacier crossing much easier than normal and on one route we were able to bypass the tricky rock pitch by romping up an easy snow slope which would normally have melted a couple of months earlier.

Thanks all for the comments- glad it's of interest.

TobyA: the pics were all taken between 26 July and 6 August 2015. It had been a poor snow year the previous winter, followed by a sustained heatwave through early July, which meant a lot of snow had gone by the time we got there.

Pec raises an important point about distinguishing between the signal and the noise. Some places (eg scotland and Norway) had colder summers than normal while the Alps we're baking. Weather patterns are variable. And it would be absurd to blame every open crevasse or rockfall on climate change... It's more about recognising broad directions of travel, including net glacier loss and a greater frequency of heatwaves etc - and thinking through what that means for the future.

Sellathechemist: Nice radio documentary. Recommended.

In reply to UKC Articles:

Great photos and good article on an important topic. I think climbers of all sorts could do more to try and reduce their footprint and look after the places they love so much

In reply to UKC Articles:

Probably around 0% confidence should be applied to any claims made regarding this, but...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/24/why-som...
Wiki suggests the global effects of warming would for Europe outweigh the local cooling from the reduction in this current in Europe. But more locally on the UK, an island stuck out in the Atlantic? Perhaps the Kinder downfall might finally be in...

(PS global warming remains a bad thing for most)

In reply to jdgaventa:



Thats funny because the Norwegians said they'd had a really heavy winter's snowfall followed by cold summer.

This all got me thinking that perhaps in decades to come alpinism might become a winter sport much as Scottish winter climbing is with only rock routes done in summer (where its not actually all falling down!).

In reply to pec:

That's exactly what jdgaventa said in the post above. (And ditto for Scotland this year.)

In reply to UKC Articles:

I Agree with the impact of changing climate on the Mountains, however the 2C and decarbonisation is a big jump from there. The 2C is not a modelling result, but a concoction of the Postdam PIK (http://bit.ly/1Vpjhdx). The models have done a very poor job in simulating temperature in the last 20 years and much worse in simulating snowfall. One may feel good by making carbon-related sacrifices, but it may be completely useless for the Alpine environment.