Understanding the Role of Climate Change in the Blatten Avalanche Disaster
- Post by: Randy Muñoz
- June 16, 2025
- Comments off
Two weeks after the devastating ice-rock avalanche in Blatten, questions persist—even within the scientific community—about the role of climate change in triggering the event. EClim’s Christian Huggel offers an important clarification grounded in years of interdisciplinary work and contributions to IPCC AR5 and AR6 reports on climate impact attribution.
🔍 Key insights:
- Attribution science acknowledges that multiple drivers contribute to natural system changes—climate change is one of them.
- In the case of Kleines Nesthorn and Birch Glacier, three critical long-term warming-related processes contributed to slope destabilization:
- Glacier downwasting (loss of ice support/debuttressing)
- Permafrost degradation
- Loss of snow and firn cover, increasing rock face warming
- Without these cumulative changes, the rock slope failures that overloaded the glacier and led to collapse would likely not have occurred.
📌 Why is this important?
- A comprehensive understanding requires interdisciplinary collaboration—spanning glaciology, permafrost science, climatology, rock mechanics, and mass flow dynamics.
- Attribution is not just about immediate triggers, but about multi-decadal processes acting across temporal scales.
📚 Recommended reading:
- Hansen et al. 2016 – Attribution of climate change impacts
- Carlson et al. – Climate change impact attribution studies
- Gonzalez et al. 2023 – A framework for the detection and attribution
🔗 Read Christian Huggel’s full reflection on LinkedIn
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