2 hours ago
By Imogen Fawkes, BBC News, Geneva
Image Courtesy, Swiss Police/Canton Valais
image caption,
Boots and climbing gear found with bodies near Theodor Glacier
A human remains found near a glacier on the Matterhorn in Switzerland in July has been confirmed as belonging to a German climber who has been missing since 1986.
A group of climbers who had climbed from the village of Zermatt in southern Switzerland and were walking along Theodor Glacier found the body on July 12. He noticed that his climbing shoes and anti-slip crampons were exposed outside the ice.
According to local police, a DNA analysis of the body revealed it to be that of a German climber who disappeared 37 years ago. Police did not release his identity, but the man, who was 38 at the time, disappeared while hiking. A large-scale search was carried out at the time, but no clues were found.
It is believed to be one of the cases where climate change is rapidly shrinking glaciers in the Alps, exposing more of what was buried in the ice.
Theodor Glacier is part of the year-round skiing area of Zermatt and is known as the highest ski area in Europe. However, mountain ice fields are particularly vulnerable to warming, with Theodor Glacier shrinking significantly in recent years. It was connected to the neighboring Gorner Glacier until the 1980s, but is now separated.
Lost for decades, in recent years they have emerged from melting glaciers every summer. Last year, the wreckage of a plane that crashed in 1968 was found in the Aletsch Glacier.
In 2014, a pilot carrying supplies to the Matterhorn hut found the remains of a climber. The body was later identified as Jonathan Colville, a British man who had been missing since 1979. The family, who had gone missing for many years, said it was “heartbreaking” to finally confirm that Mr Colville had died in a place he loved.
Two years later, the bodies of two Japanese climbers who had gone missing in a storm in 1970 were found on the edge of the Matterhorn glacier.
Last year, melting glaciers even affected the position of the Swiss-Italian border. Borders were once defined by watersheds where glaciers melted and flowed down in the direction of one country or the other. However, melting glaciers have shifted the watershed point. As a result, for example, the Italian mountain hut Rifugio Guide del Cervino, popular with climbers, is now technically located in Switzerland.
The two governments are negotiating the demarcation of the border.
But melting glaciers have far more implications than diplomatic negotiations over borders and the discovery of long-lost climbers.
Alpine glaciers are of great importance to the European environment. The winter snow that glaciers store is the source of Europe’s great rivers, such as the Rhine and the Danube, and provides water for agriculture and cooling for nuclear power plants. Last year and this year, the water levels on the Rhine were so low that cargo ships traveling from the Netherlands to Germany to Switzerland could not move.
Meltwater from glaciers also has the effect of lowering the temperature of rivers. Without that cooling effect, the water temperature rises and the fish die.
Last July, Swiss glaciers were found to have halved since 1931, shocking experts by saying they were melting much faster than previously predicted.
For example, comparing 1928 and 2021 photos of the Fischer Glacier shows that the glacier has almost disappeared.
It was said last summer that if this pace continued, the Alps would be almost entirely glaciated by the end of the century.
This year, however, Switzerland experienced an unusually hot and dry June. The first three weeks of July this year were the hottest on record globally.
Glacier experts will measure alpine glaciers again in August and September, but there are already growing concerns about what the results will be.
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2023-07-29 03:54:34
