Climate Warming and Ice Weakening Trigger Alpine Glacier Collapses - The Marmolada Case [Dolomites, Northern Italy]
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https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL121279 <-- shared paper
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https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-3027-2025 <-- shared technical article
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Marmolada_serac_collapse <-- shared Wikipedia page
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[anecdotal – in the early 1990s, I chose to spend a winter as a ski bum/guide, living in Arabba, Dolomites, Sud Tyrol; I still remember the excellent days when I got to ski on the Marmolada]
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“PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY: On 3 July 2022, a portion of the Marmolada glacier, near Punta Rocca, collapsed and caused the death of 11 mountaineers. This dramatic event had a considerable impact on the media, and authorities were concerned about the risk that other collapses might occur in this and other glaciers of the Dolomites, a well-renowned mountain region of the southeastern Alps and one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites. [They] analyzed the possible causes of the collapse by developing a three-dimensional thermo-mechanical model. The analysis concluded that the collapse was caused by increased internal ice temperature and the development of a dense network of fractures, reducing the ice shear strength, with melting water that possibly contributed by increasing the basal pressure. [They] also showed that collapsing conditions can be identified with a simplified model version approximating the sliding basal surface as a plane with a slope equal to the surface slope. The developed approach can be used in hazard identification and risk analysis of mountain glaciers…”
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