Pack your hiking boots: this week we're taking you on a trip to the European Alps, which have been especially affected by global warming. Temperatures here have risen twice as fast as the global average, and glaciers are retreating dramatically as a result, with knock-on effects for safety, geopolitics and even our understanding of the distant past.
To find out what this change feels like in day-to-day life, I visited the Hochjochferner glacier, located at 3,000m (9,800ft) above sea level, on the border between Austria and Italy. This glacier has been "vanishing before our eyes", in the words of one scientist, with a startling consequence: its meltwater used to flow into both Austria and Italy, but now, the water from the remaining patch only flows into Austria. In some areas of the Alps, melting glaciers are even affecting national borders – and countries are finding different ways to cope with that. Read the full story from the Hochjochferner glacier here.
Leaving the glacier behind, and taking a short bus and train ride to the city of Bolzano in northern Italy, I visited a museum where I looked at evidence of another surprising consequence of glacier change: ancient artefacts, and even bodies, are emerging from the melting ice. The finds have given rise to a new field, called "glacial archaeology", that has changed and enriched our understanding of human survival in the mountains thousands of years ago. Read about the extraordinary remains emerging from the ice. |
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