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The Mont-de-Lans glacier, or Mantel, is losing its thickness due to climate change, so the resort of Les Deux Alpes is planning to install artificial snow cannons to save it.
Tuesday 22 August 2017 5 minutes reading time
From 1900 to 2014 on average, temperatures throughout the Alpine arena rose to 1.85 ° C and 0.89 ° C in France. At the same time, there is a decrease in precipitation, which, combined with rising temperatures, leads to a decrease in snowfall, especially at medium and low altitudes. The most visible consequence of these climate change is the progressive disappearance of glaciers: over the past 30 years, the Alps lost on average a meter thick per year. According to a study, an average heating of +3 ° C by 2100 would lead to the disappearance of glaciers whose altitude is less than 3500 meters.
The Les Deux Alpes glacier is located in the massive Oisans-Pelvoux and its highest point is 3420 meters above sea level. Mont-de-Lans is run by the resort of Les Deux Alpes during the winter season but also during the summer and during the holidays of November 1st. During the summer, there are about 140,000 enthusiasts attending. Unfortunately, however, it loses its thickness from one to two meters per year. Experts say that if it does not intervene immediately, in less than 30 years the glacier will no longer exist because, according to the studies and tests carried out, the current ice thickness is 60 meters.
Les Deux Alpes is already implementing several solutions to keep the glacier in good condition:
- Compacting is the number one priority throughout the year: compacting and densifying snow to limit its melting.
- The installation of "wind traps", trenches or barriers that allow "breaking the wind" and forming artificial snow drifts. And the Mont-de-Lans glacier, for its configuration, is particularly sensitive to the wind.
Arnaud Guerrand, Deux Alpes Operations Manager Loisirs, and his team have chosen to install six snow guns on the glacier that will help form the protective glacial snow layer, thus limiting its meltdown. Snow has a dual role of protection: not only isolate the ice, preventing it from directly reaching the air and the sun, but also avoiding its absorption of energy. Plus the glacier is "clean", that is, white, and less melts.
The project is to install six cannons on the glacier starting next month powered by the cast iron lake at the beginning of the Puy Salie towers. The impact of all this on glacier conditions is difficult to calculate. Would the Mont-de-Lans Glacier be more often if it had never been exploited? Or would he lose even faster thickness? This is one of the criticisms that you regularly read about social.
A study published in 2016 shows that conservation measures implemented for some of the exploited Austrian glaciers have been successful, limiting bulk loss: -0.23 meters per year compared to -0.78, but points out that these measures only slow down The inexorable destiny awaiting the alpine glaciers below 3500 meters. After all, on Presena. The Passo del Tonale glacier, whose maximum altitude is about 3000 meters, has been shooting for years but the situation does not improve much ...
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