'Vanishing': Switzerland drapes blankets on Swiss Alps to protect from climate change

Almost all glaciers in the Swiss Alps could disappear by 2100, and at least 10 per cent have melted in the past 5 years due to the impact of global warming accelerating climate change, a study published by top environmentalists in the journal Nature warned. As the permafrost on snow-capped Alps Mountains has been drastically shrinking, melting the glaciers five times faster than they were in the 1960s, each year, the authorities in Switzerland and European Alps try to limit the impact of the rising global temperature by draping the glacial slopes with large blankets manufactured out of the polyester fleece that bounces sunlight away acting as a reflector.

In the footage, one can see vast white fleece covering stretches of snow mountains over huge areas near the glacier's edge. Some are piled up near the rocks, or on top of few wooden planks with a ladder on its side, that will be used by the workers from the nearby Swiss resorts to cover the snow-capped mountains. They are desperately trying to preserve the Swiss tourist attraction. Scientists have warned about the ‘extreme’ glacier loss in the years to come as a result of the human-caused climate change. A study revealed that climate change has triggered “mass loss” of ice on the glaciers in the Southern Alps, Swiss, and European Alps. This melting ice event was at least 10 times more likely in 2018. Another event leading to the loss of giant ice occurred in 2011. 

Huge scathes of ice from the 3,238-metre (10,623-ft) Mount Titlis, a popular Swiss tourist attraction, have disappeared. “Within the next half-century, all of it is expected to melt,” according to the World Economic Forum. Workers nearby the Swiss Alp resorts have resort to blanketing the loft snowy peaks with fleece to provide a “protective shield” from global warming and climate change. Loss of snow in Switzerland would be an existential threat to ski resorts, the workers say, in a report carried by WEF. The Swiss government meanwhile is worried that approximately 90 per cent of the remaining snow-capped peaks, an estimated 1,500 glaciers, will be gone by the end of the century. 

[The oldest glacier in the Alps is protected by tarps to prevent it from melting. Credit: AP]

Authorities this year have ramped up the draping of the Titlis Bergbahnen, although year after year, they have witnessed the size of the cover increasing. It takes these workers somewhere between five-to-six weeks to complete the process of the protective polyester fleecing as this year, their task was to blanket 100,000 square meters of the area to prevent the snow from melting. The entire 10,623-foot Mount Titlis is expected to disappear entirely within the next 50 years due to the climate crisis, scientists say.

['Extreme’ glacier loss events linked to human-caused climate change. Credit: World Economic Forum]

White fleece bounces sun's energy back off 1,076,391 square feet area

White fleece helps radiate the sun's energy back into the atmosphere, thereby preserving some snow on the glaciers until the winters arrive. Each year, the workers remove a layer of snow coating from the fleece and use it to refill the cracks on the glacier's surface. This strategy is applied across 1,076,391 square feet area of the Alps. But as the climate crisis melts away the mountain glaciers and the Arctic polar ice, Swiss authorities were made aware that a drastic step was needed. 

It was in 2004 that they came up with the idea of using white tarpaulin over the Gurschenfirn glacier above the Andermatt resort, according to the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research (WSL). They then expanded the blanketing strategy to seven other glaciers in the Swiss Alps, and then one other at the Diavolezza resort. Each year there are more glaciers standing in the face of the threat of global climate change, and the experts at WSL, ETH Zurich, and the University of Fribourg tally that it would cost more than $1 billion a year if covering all of Switzerland's glaciers would be needed, one day. 

Footage Credit: World Economic Forum

IMAGE: AP