Mudslides kill four along Swiss-Italian border

Yahoo News via AFP: At least four people were killed as landslides triggered by torrential rain slammed into houses and buildings on either side of the Swiss Italian border Sunday, police and media said. In the rain-drenched southern Ticino region of Switzerland, two people died and four were injured when a mudslide slammed into a small residential building, regional police said.

On the other side of the border, a pensioner and his granddaughter were killed when another landslide engulfed a house on the Italian shores of Lake Maggiore, local media reported. Three other family members survived.

Those landslides were the latest of many to recently have hit northern Italy and southern Switzerland amid incessant rainfall over recent weeks. They also came a day after storms in southern France killed six people, including a mother and her two small sons whose car was swept away in flooding.

In Switzerland, the bodies of two local women, aged 34 and 38, were pulled Sunday from the rubble of the three-story apartment building in Davesco-Soragno, near Lugano, after being hit by the mudslide shortly before 2:30 am (0130 GMT), Ticino police said.

Another resident had returned home after the landslide hit and was unharmed, but police said they were still searching the area to make sure no one else was under the rubble. The tragedy came 10 days after a young mother and her three-year-old daughter were killed when a landslide swept away their house in the same region...

A foggy road near Ticino, shot by Luca Casartelli, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license

Impacts of climate change in Switzerland: adaptation and climate change mitigation must go hand in hand

AlphaGalileo via University of Bern: Southern Switzerland emerges as a hotspot of the effects of climate change. And the bark beetle is putting spruces all over Switzerland under increasing pressure, because an additional generation of pests could hatch each year due to the rising temperatures. These are two of many statements from the report «CH2014-Impacts», which deals with the quantitative consequences of climate change for Switzerland. It has been produced under the direction of the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research of the University of Bern.

More than 20 research groups from all over Switzerland have worked on the climate change impacts report during the past two years. The unprecedented project was initiated and coordinated by the Oeschger Centre of the University of Bern; it was financially supported by the Federal Office for the Environment (BAFU) and MeteoSchweiz. In its investigations into seven subject areas – from glaciers and water balance to woods, biodiversity and agriculture to health and energy – the researchers took the so-called «CH2011 Scenarios» as their starting point for the future development of temperature and precipitation in Switzerland. From these climate scenarios they derived concrete impacts. With this uniform basis the numerous research groups were able to feed the same data into their models and thus make the results comparable. «This approach provides valuable foundations for the development of adaptation strategies», says Christoph Raible from the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research of the University of Bern, which coordinated the project.

The results of the «CH2014-Impacts» project confirm existing knowledge concerning the consequences of climate change and provide new findings. For example, previous assessments concerning changes in the Swiss glaciers have been clearly corroborated: if no radical climate policy measures are taken, around 90 percent of the Swiss glaciers will disappear by the end of this century. Around half of the remaining glacial ice will already have melted away by 2035.

...One conclusion of «CH2014-Impacts» is that, with or without climate protection, Switzerland will not be able to do without adaptation. This also includes improved management, such as in agriculture for example – including the choice of varieties and pest control – and in water supply. Due to the changing streamflow in the rivers, it will in future be necessary to be more economical with the use of water. But climate change is also presenting forestry with new challenges. The changing conditions necessitate an adaptation of forest tending and the promotion of biodiversity....

The Aletsch glacier in Switzerland, shot by Didier Baertschiger, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Snow monitoring methods reduce flood risk

Julie Hunt in swissinfo.ch:  Thanks to new monitoring techniques that improve flood forecasting, Switzerland is now less prone to the catastrophic type of flooding that has hit the country over the past few decades. “We can now compare the current situation with other situations in previous years, and tell the flood forecasters if there is significantly more snow than average in the mountains that is due to melt over the next couple of days,” says researcher Tobias Jonas.

Jonas is a hydrologist at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), a Davos-based institute carrying out cutting-edge work in the field.

The research is important as half of Switzerland is over 1,000 metres above sea level and a quarter over 2,000 metres, so roughly a third of all annual precipitation is snow. When it melts, it can lead to spring floods. In May 1999, heavy rainfall coincided with the main snowmelt period, resulting in devastating floods causing damage totalling SFr580 million ($626 million).

The disaster raised awareness of snow hydrology in general and led to the monitoring of snow water resources being integrated into the federal flood forecasting system. Keeping track of the distribution of snow is vital for predicting run off - the water that flows over the land when the soil is saturated and excess water from rain, melt water or other sources cannot be absorbed.

Water produced by melting snow is known by hydrologists as the “snow water equivalent” (SWE). Until recently, this was very difficult to quantify. There are only about 40 monitoring stations in Switzerland providing SWE data and the measurements are fairly infrequent, as they are time consuming. Teams of scientists have to dig holes in the snow right down to ground level to extract ice cores, which are then weighed.

...This new technique of combining actual measurements with models enabled the WSL to provide daily maps that show how much water the snow will yield at 350 different stations throughout Switzerland. Snow hydrological bulletins are then sent to flood forecasters....

Frozen Hinterstockensee seen from Stockhornbahn, Iglucamp on the left, shot by Chin tin tin, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Researchers analyze melting glaciers and water resources in Central Asia

PhysOrg: As part of the ACQWA European project, coordinated by the Institute of Environmental Sciences at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), researchers from UNIGE collaborated with scientists from the German-speaking part of Switzerland, Germany, and Russia to highlight the recent climate changes and glaciation in the Tien Shan Mountains (Central Asia), and explain their consequences.

After the fall of the Soviet Union twenty years ago, water distribution in Central Asia became a source of conflict. In areas where summer precipitation is low, glaciers play an important role when considering the quantity of available water. The Tien Shan region is a prime example; mountain glaciers in this region contribute significantly to the fresh water supply in the arid zones of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Northwestern China.

Like Switzerland, Kyrgyzstan serves as a water tower for its neighboring countries. While the impact of climate change on glaciation and water flow in the Tien Shan Mountains has already been the subject of studies, a consistent and local perspective of collected data has never before been presented. The results of this research, led by the l'UNIGE, show that the retreat of glaciers is more pronounced in peripheral areas, where summers are dry and melting ice and snow are key sources of water.

Glaciers are losing their surface every year The glaciers in the Tien Shan Mountains cover a surface of over 15,000 square kilometers, equivalent to one third of the surface area of Switzerland. In recent decades, these glaciers have lost between 0.1% and 0.8% of their surface per year; a decrease comparable to that of alpine glaciers. The largest retreat was observed on the periphery of the Tien Shan Mountains, near the major cities of Almaty, Bishkek, Tashkent and Ürümqi. "In the summer, glaciers are the only source of fresh water for irrigation and household consumption in these regions," said Annina Sorg, first author of the study and researcher at the ISE (UNIGE) and at the Institute of Geology of Bern University. "The intensification of glacial melting strongly affects the quantity and seasonal distribution of water. Initially, the retreat of glaciers is going to increase the available water resources, but if precipitation doesn't compensate for the losses related to glacial retreat, the reduction of glacier volume will eventually reduce the amount of available water."...

A glacier in the Tien Shan mountain range, shot by Andrzej Barabasz (Chepry), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Global warming harms lakes

Terra Daily via SPX: Global warming also affects lakes. Based on the example of Lake Zurich, researchers from the University of Zurich demonstrate that there is insufficient water turnover in the lake during the winter and harmful Burgundy blood algae are increasingly thriving. The warmer temperatures are thus compromising the successful lake clean-ups of recent decades.

Many large lakes in Central Europe became heavily overfertilized in the twentieth century through sewage. As a result, algal blooms developed and cyanobacteria (photosynthetic bacteria) especially began to appear en masse. Some of these organisms form toxins that can compromise the use of the lake water. Dying algal blooms consume a lot of oxygen, thereby reducing the oxygen content in the lake with negative consequences for the fish stocks.

The problem with overfertilization was not merely the absolute amount of oxygen and phosphorus, the two most important nutrients for algae. Mankind has also changed the ratio between the two nutrients: The phosphorus load in lakes has been reduced vastly in recent decades, yet pollution with nitrogen compounds has not decreased on the same scale. The current ratio between the nutrients can thus trigger a mass appearance of certain cyanobacteria, even in lakes that have been deemed "restored".

"The problem today is that mankind is changing two sensitive lake properties at the same time, namely the nutrient ratios and, with global warming, water temperature," explains Thomas Posch, a limnologist from the University of Zurich. In collaboration with Zurich Water Supply, he analyzed 40 years' worth of data in a study that has just been published in Nature Climate Change....

Zürichsee, the village Au, Au peninsula and Zimmerberg region, as seen from Felsenegg, Thalwil and Horgen in the foreground, Wädenswil in the background. Shot by Roland zh, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Melting permafrost threatens Swiss villages

Ray Smith in IPS: Melting glaciers are the most visible effect of global warming in the Swiss Alps. Meanwhile, permafrost is invisible and melting too, often causing rockfall and massive debris flows, ultimately threatening mountain villages.

Guttannen, home to 310 residents, is a tiny village in the Bernese Alps, the last one that travellers drive through on the way up to Grimsel Pass. It’s spring and the snow is retreating from the steep slopes of the valley. As the pass is still closed, calm reigns in the picturesque village centre. Only cowbells and the rushing of the nearby Aar river break the silence.

For some residents though, living in Guttannen has become rather uneasy and, on the long term, even dangerous. The root cause of the peril lies further uphill, in the northeastern flank of the 3,282 metres high Ritzlihorn. In July 2009, a huge rockfall had occurred and since then, massive debris flows have roared downhill each summer.

“These mudslides as well as the volume of transported rubble have grown from year to year,” says Nils Hählen, hydraulic engineer at the cantonal public works service. “The debris partly ends up in the Aar, lifting and widening its channel.” Within three years, 630,000 cubic metres were transported into the river, increasingly endangering civil infrastructure.

In summer, after heavy rainfall, the only road leading through the narrow valley often has to be temporarily closed. A house near the river already had to be taken down, the local sewage treatment plant may be next. Since 2010, the debris flows reach as far as the hamlet Boden, threatening ten houses and 30 inhabitants....

The Oberarsee in Guttanen, Switzerland, shot by V. Raz, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Melting glaciers are rending the Matterhorn

David A. Gabel in the Environmental News Network: The Matterhorn is the iconic peak of the Alpine mountains on the border of Switzerland and Italy. ...The glaciers at the top of the mountain have been receding due to the changing climate, causing an increase in glacial melt water. According to a new study, the melting glaciers are causing large chunks of rock to be dislodged and tumble down the mountain. The deluge of water is penetrating cracks and fissures high up the mountain. The yearly freeze-thaw cycle causes these fissures to expand until entire boulders come loose of the Matterhorn and fall down its rocky slopes.

The study was conducted by scientists from the University of Zurich who began to closely examine the mountain in 2007. Their investigation was kick-started by an event which occurred in July, 2003. At the time, there was a huge rock fall at the Hornligrat part of the mountain, trapping 50 climbers. They had to be air-lifted to safety in one of the largest rescue operations ever in the Alps.

The Zurich researchers relied on sophisticated monitoring devices located in 17 key parts of the mountain. Their research has found an increasing frequency of rockfalls which they believe are directly linked to climate change.

The problem of melting glaciers penetrating fissures is not a problem solely of the Matterhorn, but of the rest of the Alps as well. The study also suggests that the effects of global warming on mountain ranges are much greater than previously believed. It not only raises temperatures, but has the ability to alter the shape of the mountain....

The Matterhorn from the North side, shot by Zermatt photos, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Swiss warn of massive ice chunk breaking off glacier

Space Daily: A massive part of a glacier the size of 12 football fields in the Swiss Alps could break off, local authorities warned, after the discovery of an enormous crevasse in the glacier. Swiss authorities have formed a crisis team to monitor the situation and blocked all hiking trails close to the Giesen glacier located at an altitude of 2,800 metres, below the north face of the Jungfrau peak in the Bernese alps.

Christian Abbuehl, who is heading the crisis team at the Lauterbrunnen commune, confirmed that the size of ice that risks breaking off to be about 12 football fields. "But we do not know how thick the ice is, so we do not know the volume of water that could be generated if it melts," he said.

The large crack was discovered about a month ago, and prompted the Lauterbrunnen commune to issue a warning. "A crevasse has been discovered at the Giesen glacier, which is found on the northeast side under the Jungfrau, leading to small pieces of ice falling off," said the commune. "We cannot rule out that a large amount of ice could break off in the direction of Trimmleten-Sandbach," it added.

Abbuehl said the situation remains unchanged from the September warning, but noted that it could improve as the temperature falls. While it has been unseasonably warm in early October, the weather is expected to turn by Friday, with snowfall expected in the Alps.

"At the moment, the danger is not so great as it is going to get colder. For the population there is also no immediate danger," noted Abbuehl....

The Jungfrau, near Interlaken, shot by Earth explorer, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Fudging in greenhouse gas stats?

EMPA, which is part of ETH (Switzerland): Fluorinated hydrocarbons are potent greenhouse gases, emission of which must be reduced under the Kyoto Protocol. If you rely on the official reports of the participating countries, the output of trifluoromethane (HFC-23) in Western Europe is indeed significantly decreasing. However, pollutant measurements carried out by Empa now reveal that several countries under-report their emissions. For instance, Italy emits 10 to 20 times more HFC-23 than it officially reports.

International agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) basically have one snag: it is almost impossible to independently verify whether participating countries abide by the agreement. Thus the evaluation of whether or not the countries have achieved their reduction targets is based on the official reports by the countries that are signatories to the UNFCCC (‘United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’). If they report reduced emissions they're sitting pretty; if not, they are pilloried.

This could change soon. Pollutant analyses by Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, – at the Jungfraujoch research station at 3580 metres above sea level, among others – using a special gas chromatograph mass spectrometer called ‘MEDUSA’ not only enables the emission levels of more than 50 halogenated GHG to be quickly and precisely evaluated; they also make it possible to identify the emission sources regionally, thanks to atmospheric and meteorological computer models. The sobering result: Western Europe emits around twice as much HFC-23 as officially reported. A corresponding study was recently published in the journal ‘Geophysical Research Letters’.

“Our results show that these types of measurements really are suitable for checking compliance with international agreements on air pollution control”, says Empa researcher Stefan Reimann from the ‘Air Pollution/Environmental Technology’ laboratory. It is true that the Kyoto Protocol did not specify any independent control mechanisms; this could, however, be of central importance in subsequent agreements with binding emission targets...

The Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps, where the atmospheric measurements in this study were taken, shot by Peter Alder, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Swiss face one of worst droughts on record

Terra Daily: Swiss officials began moving trout from a river this week to save them from plunging water levels, amid one of the worst droughts to hit the country in 150 years. "2011 is off to a good start to finish as one of the most significant droughts since 1864," the year when records began in Switzerland, said Olivier Duding, a climatologist from Swiss weather service Meteosuisse.

Across Switzerland, rainfall measured from January to date is half that of previous years' average. Eastern Switzerland's ski resort of Sils-Maria has recorded the beginning of 2011 as the driest since records began. In canton Zurich, officials began moving trout this week from the river Toess before their habitat dried up.

Meanwhile, cracked mud line the shores of western Switzerland's Lake Gruyere where water levels have also plunged. According to Meteosuisse, the drought in western Switzerland over the last 12 months is as severe as those recorded in 1884 and 1921.

Several cantons have also imposed bans on lighting fire in and close to forests. "It is very dry in Switzerland, there has been a snow shortage, a water shortage through winter," said Urs Vogt, who manages Suckler Cow Switzerland, an association which champions keeping calves with their mothers after birth….

The stupefying pace of glacier melt in the 1940s

ETH (Switzerland): In Switzerland, the increase in snow in wintertime and the glacier melt in summertime have been measured at measurement points at around 3,000 metres above sea level – on the Clariden Firn, the Great Aletsch glacier and the Silvretta glacier – without interruption for almost 100 years. As part of his doctoral work, Matthias Huss used this unique range of measurements to examine how climate change in the last century affected the glaciers.

In its work, the research team took into account the solar radiation measured on the Earth’s surface in Davos since 1934. Studies over the past two decades have shown that solar radiation varies substantially due to aerosols and clouds, and this is assumed to influence climate fluctuations. Recent years have seen the emergence of the terms ‘global dimming’ and ‘global brightening’ to describe these phenomena of reduced and increased solar radiation respectively. These two effects are currently the subject of more and more scientific research, in particular by ETH Zurich, as experts feel that they should be taken into account in the climate models (see ETH Life dated July 9, 2009)

The new study, published in the journal ‘Geophysical Research Letters’, confirms this requirement. This is because, taking into account the data recorded for the level of solar radiation, the scientists made a surprising discovery: in the 1940s and in the summer of 1947 especially, the glaciers lost the most ice since measurements commenced in 1914. This is in spite of the fact that temperatures were lower than in the past two decades. “The surprising thing is that this paradox can be explained relatively easily with radiation”, says Huss, who was recently appointed to the post of senior lecturer at the Department of Geosciences at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.

On the basis of their calculations, the researchers have concluded that the high level of short-wave radiation in the summer months is responsible for the fast pace of glacier melt. In the 1940s, the level was 8% higher than the long-term average and 18 Watts per square metres above the levels of the past ten years. Calculated over the entire decade of the 1940s, this resulted in 4% more snow and ice melt compared with the past ten years. Furthermore, the below-average melt rates at the measurement points during periods in which the glacier snouts were even advancing correlate with a phase of global dimming, between the 1950s and the 1980s.

…Huss points out that the strong glacier melt in the 1940s puts into question the assumption that the rate of glacier decline in recent years “has never been seen before”. “Nevertheless”, says the glaciologist, “this should not lead people to conclude that the current period of global warming is not really as big of a problem for the glaciers as previously assumed”. This is because it is not only the pace at which the Alpine glaciers are currently melting that is unusual, but the fact that this sharp decline has been unabated for 25 years now…..

Grosser Aletschgletscher (Bernese Alps), view from Eggishorn (2.927 m), in the background Jungfrau (4.158 m), Jungfraujoch (3.454 m), Mönch (4.099 m), Trugberg and Eiger (3.970 m). Shot by Dirk Beyer, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Swiss scientists measure glacial melting with light

Science Daily: The glaciers in Switzerland have been melting for years. Researchers at the University of Zurich now want to know more precisely how much ice is being lost -- and they are using the aid of light. Changes in the thickness of a glacier are traditionally measured by means of wooden poles and snow-shovels. Those methods are inexpensive and can be carried out to determine the annual or even seasonal result at individual locations. It is, however, difficult to draw conclusions about changes in the thickness of an entire glacier or all the glaciers in the region merely on the basis of those positional measurements. The scientists now want to overcome that disadvantage of direct field measurement by applying laser technology.

Philip Jörg, a Ph.D candidate involved in this project, explains how it works: "A strongly bundled beam of light is shot from an aircraft and the time is measured that the light needs to reach the surface of the ice and bounce back to the aircraft. From this so-called 'run time,' the distance from the plane to the glacier can be precisely determined to within just a few centimetres." The laser data and the exact location and position of the aircraft give rise to a highly precise, three-dimensional picture of the glacier's surface.

Researchers at the University of Zurich carried out a corresponding campaign in October of this year with a high-resolution laser scanner at the Findel Glacier close to Zermatt. The surface model that was created was compared with the results of a first flight over the glacier in the year 2005 and now enables a conclusion on the changes in thickness and volume of the entire glacier. In those four years, the Findel Glacier has lost almost 3.5 metres of average ice thickness, and as much as 25 to 30 metres at its tongue. Overall, the glacier has lost around 49 million cubic metres of ice. If that volume of ice were melted and emptied into the Lake of Zurich, the water level of the lake would rise by about half a metre….

A virtual, three-dimensional view of Findel Glacier near Zermatt, from 2005 laser data, overlaid with an aerial photo from 2006, via swisstopo BA091673. Image copyright by Universität Zürich, Swissphoto, Swisstopo, Axpo Klima-Netzwerk.

Climate change threatens 25% of Swiss farmlands

The Manila Bulletin via Agence France-Presse: Climate change is already threatening more than a quarter of Switzerland's farmland with frequent and lengthy water shortages, according to official research published Tuesday. The Swiss federal agricultural research station Agroscope said about 10 times more land would need to be irrigated to avoid lost harvests, some 400,000 hectares instead of the 38,000 hectares that currently receive regular irrigation.

But researcher Jurg Fuhrer told AFP that such huge irrigation to cope with more frequent drought might not be economically viable or feasible. Twenty-six percent of usable agricultural land and 41 percent of arable land is at risk due to the drier climate that has been emerging in recent years, the scientific study found.

The conclusions were based on a range of research including detailed observations of local climate, hydrological data and crop patterns between 1980 and 2006. It showed that the Alpine country's prime arable land, spread across lower lying northern plains and valleys, had been the hardest hit by a growing frequency of summertime drought, including the Rhine valley.

"I was surprised to see the size of the area," said Fuhrer. "The area is expanding, that's the significant part." Swiss farmers should expect a period of damaging drought at least once every three years, the researchers predicted.

The Rhine is one of Europe's biggest rivers, flowing northwards through Germany from its source in the Swiss Alps. The Rhone valley in southwestern Switzerland, which stretches into southern France, is also at risk. "There are implications for anybody who lives along these rivers," Fuhrer pointed out….

A farm in the Entlebuch region of Switzerland, shot by Simon Koopmann, Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 Germany License

Ice volume of Switzerland's dwindling glaciers calculated

Science Daily: Swiss glaciers have lost a lot of ice in recent years due to increased melting. As temperatures climb, so do the fears that the glaciers could one day disappear altogether. Until now it could only be estimated approximately how big the ice volume in the Swiss Alps actually is and how it has changed in recent years.

A team of scientists headed by Martin Funk, ETH-Professor at the Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology (VAW) at ETH Zurich, however, has now developed a novel procedure for determining the ice volume of a glacier. Their results are presented in the current issue of Global and Planetary Change.

The researchers developed the new method according to the law of mass conservation, which states that the surface mass balance has to be balanced by the ice flow and the change in ice thickness. This allows [us] to infer on the ice thickness distribution of a glacier from the surface topography by estimating the mass balance distribution. "The calculation of the current ice volume is the most important indicator in predicting future glacier changes," explains Martin Funk.

The scientists applied the procedure to the 59 Swiss glaciers larger than three square kilometers. For the remaining 1’400 glaciers, the ice volume was estimated by using an empirical area-volume approach derived from the new generated data set. The total glacier ice volume in 1999 was estimated to 74 km3, with an accuracy of 9 km3. This means the total volume of all glaciers of Switzerland is smaller than that of the Lake Geneva, which has a water volume of 89 km3. With a glaciated land area of 1’063 km2, the Swiss glaciers have an average ice thickness of 70 meters…..

Lateral moraine on a glacier joining the Gorner Glacier, Zermatt, Switzerland. Taken by Adrian Pingstone in 1963 and released to the public domain.

Melting snow prompts border change between Switzerland and Italy

The Independent (UK): Global warming is dissolving the Alpine glaciers so rapidly that Italy and Switzerland have decided they must re-draw their national borders to take account of the new realities. The border has been fixed since 1861, when Italy became a unified state. But for the past century the surface area of the “cryosphere”, the zone of glaciers, permanent snow cover and permafrost, has been shrinking steadily, with dramatic acceleration in the past five years. This is the area over which the national frontier passes and the two countries have now agreed to have their experts sit down together and hash out where it ought to run now.

Daniel Gutknecht, responsible for the co-ordination of national borders at Switzerland’s Office of Topography, said “the border is moving because of the warmer climate”, among other reasons. In Italy, the change in frontier requires that parliament approve a new law before it can happen. Franco Narducci, an opposition member of the foreign affairs committee, is preparing the bill to be put to MPs. The draft law has already been endorsed by the Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, and is expected to become law before the end of next month. In Switzerland no new law is required to make the changes.

The zones affected include areas around the Matterhorn, the 4,478-metre-high mountain known in Italy as il Cervino. The frontier will have to be shifted between a few metres and a hundred metres, but there will be no impact on border communities as the frontier, which is more than 4,000 metres above sea level, is well above any human habitation…..

The Matterhorn reflected in the Riffelsee, shot by Dirk Beyer, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License

Philippines considers insurance against climate change

Business Mirror (Philippines): Climate-risk insurance solutions can reduce the financial risks from an increasing number of natural catastrophes in the Philippines, according to Presidential Adviser on Global Warming and Climate Change Secretary Heherson Alvarez.

Alvarez said a delegation report to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo expounds on what the Philippines needs—an insurance-related system to help poorer countries manage weather-related risks. The insurance being pushed by Switzerland has been submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Alvarez headed the Philippine Delegation to the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland from December 1 to 12. “Climate risk insurance as a viable option for dampening the negative effects of global warming,” Alvarez told the BusinessMirror. “The Philippines is pushing for consideration of risk sharing and transfer mechanisms, such as climate risk insurance to address loss and damage in the Philippines [which] is vulnerable to climate change.”

…The Swiss government has proposed that developed countries with a global levy of $2.00 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted should commit to the insurance, he explained. He added that 60 percent of the fund would be retained by the country taxed, and 40 percent to a Multilateral Adaptation Fund for relief and rehabilitation of affected communities.

…Philippines came in at number 10 in the list of countries that suffered the impact of extreme weather events from 1997 to 2007.

New model predicts a glacier's life

Science Daily: EPFL researchers have developed a numerical model that can re-create the state of Switzerland's Rhône Glacier as it was in 1874 and predict its evolution until the year 2100. This is the longest period of time ever modeled in the life of a glacier, involving complex data analysis and mathematical techniques. The work will serve as a benchmark study for those interested in the state of glaciers and their relation to climate change.

The Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology at ETH Zurich has been a repository for temperature, rainfall and flow data on the Rhône Glacier since the 1800s. Researchers there have used this data to reconstruct the glacier's mass balance, i.e. the difference between the amount of ice it accumulates over the winter and the amount that melts during the summer. (1) Now, led by professor Jacques Rappaz from EPFL's Numerical Analysis and Simulations group, a team of mathematicians has taken the next step, using all this information to create a numerical model of glacier evolution, which they have used to simulate the history and predict the future of Switzerland's enormous Rhone glacier over a 226-year period.

The mathematicians developed their model using three possible future climate scenarios. "We took the most moderate one, avoiding extremely optimistic or pessimistic scenarios," explains PhD student Guillaume Jouvet. With a temperature increase of 3.6 degrees Celsius and a decrease in rainfall of 6% over a century, the glacier's "equilibrium line", or the transition from the snowfall accumulation zone to the melting zone (currently situated at an altitude of around 3000 meters), rose significantly. According to this same scenario, the simulation anticipates a loss of 50% of the volume by 2060 and forecasts the complete disapearance of the Rhône glacier around 2100.

"It is the first time that the evolution of a glacier has been numerically simulated over such a long period of time, taking into account very complex data," notes EPFL mathematician Marco Picasso. Even though measurements have been taken for quite some time, the sophisticated numerical techniques that were needed to analyze them have only been developed very recently…..

The Rhone Glacier, shot by Celesta, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

New LIDAR system sees the sky in three dimensions

Actualites EPFL (News from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland): On August 26, EPFL, the Swiss National Science Foundation and Switzerland's National Weather service, MeteoSwiss, will inaugurate a new LIDAR measurement system in Payerne, Switzerland. This technically innovative installation, unique in the world, will provide continuous data on atmospheric humidity for Western Switzerland's weather forecasting headquarters.

To make accurate forecasts, meteorologists need data on the vertical distribution of temperature and humidity in the atmosphere. The LIDAR system developed by EPFL can collect these data continuously and automatically up to an altitude of 10km. On August 26, EPFL will officially transfer this custom-developed LIDAR to MeteoSwiss, and from this point on Swiss forecasters will have access to this source of vertical humidity data for the models they use to calculate weather predictions. The project was supported by funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

The LIDAR system developed by EPFL is a relative of the familiar RADAR systems used widely in weather forecasting. Instead of sending radio waves out looking for water droplets, however, the LIDAR sends a beam of light vertically into the sky. The "echo" here is a reflection of that light from different layers in the atmosphere. This reflection is used to build an instantaneous vertical profile of temperature and humidity….

Image of the new LIDAR system from the EPFL's website