Decades-old body of skier revealed as glacier rapidly melts in Austria – National | 24CA News
A glacier in Austria that has seen unprecedented melting in recent times has given up the physique of a person believed to have died whereas snowboarding over 20 years in the past.
A mountain information discovered the stays of the person on Friday excessive up within the Austrian Alps on the Schlatenkees glacier, police mentioned. The stays had clearly been there for a while, they added.
The information referred to as police in Lienz who have been capable of retrieve the physique with a helicopter. The glacier is situated within the Hohe Tauern nationwide park in jap Tyrol province, close to the Italian border. The physique was discovered at an altitude of about 2,900 metres.
A number of metres under the physique, rescuers found a backpack containing money, a financial institution card and a driving licence. The man additionally had ski touring tools with him. It’s believed he died in an accident on the glacier.
Police have tentatively recognized the stays as belonging to an Austrian man who was 37 on the time. Authorities imagine he died in 2001, which means the person could have been encased in ice for 22 years.
DNA testing is being carried out to formally affirm the person’s identification, however these outcomes aren’t anticipated for one more few weeks, police mentioned.
This discovery comes on the heels of different human stays that have been discovered on the identical glacier lower than two months in the past, AFP reported.
A bunch of alpinists discovered human stays and components of skis on the Schlatenkees glacier in late June. Police imagine these stays may be a long time previous, although the physique has but to be recognized.
“It is rather rare that human remains and an entire corpse are found on a glacier within such a short period of time,” Tyrol police spokesperson Christian Viehweider advised AFP.
According to the Austrian Alpine Club’s annual report, Schlatenkees has seen the biggest lack of ice out of all of Austria’s glaciers in recent times. During the 2021-22 reporting interval, the glacier retreated 89.5 metres.
Since 2019, the glacier has receded as much as 100 metres, in keeping with information from Greenpeace Austria.
As glaciers more and more soften and recede as a result of local weather change, objects and human stays as soon as misplaced to the ice could be revealed.
In 2011, bones have been found on the Schlatenkees glacier that have been believed to belong to an area man who went lacking in 1957, greater than 50 years prior.
Last month in neighbouring Switzerland, police mentioned they discovered the physique of a German mountaineer who disappeared in 1986 on a glacier close to the Matterhorn.
A research revealed in Science early this yr discovered that round half of the world’s glaciers may disappear by the tip of the century, even when formidable local weather targets are met. If the world is ready to cap international temperatures from rising past 1.5 C — a goal we aren’t on monitor to fulfill — the world’s glaciers may nonetheless lose a couple of quarter of their land mass.
Such a situation would have wide-reaching results on people, as melting glaciers contribute to sea ranges rising and practically two billion individuals depend on glaciers for contemporary ingesting water.
Glaciologist Lindsey Nicholson on the University of Innsbruck advised CNN that “glaciers are undergoing a long-term trend of melting.” This pattern is predicted to proceed as every winter brings much less and fewer snow to replenish what’s melted away within the hotter seasons.
“The reduced snow amount is also partly coupled to the change in temperatures, because what happens is some of the precipitation that … would have come in the form of snow, now comes in the form of rain. That does not help the glaciers, it works against them,” she mentioned.
“If we continue with the emissions we are transmitting now, we are looking at a largely deglaciated Alps region for generations to come – and that is very sad.”
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