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…”
#EngineeringGeology #RockMechanics #GlacierCollapse #RiskAssessment #italy #Dolomites #SudTyrol #glacier #melting #massmovement #risk #hazard #analysis #Marmolada #glaciercollapse #cryosphere #warning #mitigation #hazardassessment #alpine #climatechange #globalwarming #massloss #instability #model #modeling #thermomechanical #spatialanalysis #temperature #parameters #ice #shearstrength #water #hydrology #hydrography #basal #waterpressure #meltwater #fracturing #riskanalysis #mountainglaciers
Glacier melt intensifying freshwater loss and accelerating sea-level rise

Ice melting from glaciers around the world is depleting regional freshwater resources and driving global sea levels to rise at ever-faster rates.According to new findings, through an international effort involving 35 research teams, glaciers have been losing an average of 273 billion tonnes of ice per year since the year 2000 – but hidden within this average there has been an alarming increase over the last 10 years.

It’s Saturday morning in Barcelona, and time to post another update relating to the  Open Journal of Astrophysics.  Since the last update we have published two more papers, taking  the count in Volume 7 (2024) up to 47 and the total published by OJAp up to 162. We actually accepted four papers last week, but so far only two final versions have appeared on the arXiv.

The first paper of the most recent pair – published on  Friday 14th June – is “Spectroscopic Confirmation of an Ultra-Massive Galaxy in a Protocluster at z ~ 4.9″ . The author list has a strong University of California flavour: Stephanie M. Urbano Stawinski (UC Irvine), M. C. Cooper (UC Irvine), Ben Forrest (UC Davis) , Adam Muzzin (York University, Canada), Danilo Marchesini (Tufts University), Gillian Wilson (UC Merced), Percy Gomez (Keck Observatories, USA), Ian McConachie (UC Riverside), Z. Cemile Marsan (York University, Canada), Marianna Annuziatella (Centro de Astrobiología CSIC-INTA, Spain) and Wenjun Chang (UC Riverside).

This paper presents an investigation of a cluster system involving a massive galaxy using Keck spectroscopy with determination of its redshift and star formation properties. The results pose a challenge for theorists. The paper is in the folder marked Astrophysics of Galaxies.

Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:

 

You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.

The second paper, also published on Friday 14th June and has the title “Boil-off of red supergiants: mass loss and type II-P supernovae” by Jim Fuller (Caltech) and  Daichi Tsuna (Caltech, USA and University of Tokyo, Japan). This one, which is in the folder marked Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, discusses A new model for stellar mass loss which predicts that low-mass red supergiants lose less mass than commonly assumed, while high-mass red supergiants lose more.

Here is a screen grab of the overlay which includes the abstract:

 

 

You can click on the image of the overlay to make it larger should you wish to do so. You can find the officially accepted version of the paper on the arXiv here.

That concludes this week’s update. Will we reach 50 for 20204 next week? Tune in next Saturday to find out!

https://telescoper.blog/2024/06/15/two-new-publications-at-the-open-journal-of-astrophysics-11/

#arXiv240416036v3Search_ #arXiv240521049v2 #AstrophysicsOfGalaxies #galaxyClusters #KeckTelescopes #massLoss #protocluster #redSupergiants #redshift #SolarAndStellarAstrophysics #spectroscopy #stellarMassLoss #supernovae #TheOpenJournalOfAstrophysics

Three New Publications at the Open Journal of Astrophysics

Time for another roundup of business at the  Open Journal of Astrophysics. This time I have three papers to announce, which brings the total we have published so far this year (Vol. 7) to 45 and th…

In the Dark