20,000 cubic meters of stone flowing into the Chamonix valley. A huge cloud of dust visible for miles around. The landslide that occurred on Wednesday August 23 at the Aiguille du Midi is particularly worrying, says France 3 Regions, and is a direct consequence of climate change.
While the heat wave is present on the entire southern slope of France, Mont Blanc, the highest peak in Europe, is not spared. Record heat has been recorded there in recent days, causing the melting of pieces of ice cap and large rockslides. That of Wednesday, as spectacular as it is, is only the continuity of a series of falls which has lasted for more than a week. Two days before the landslide at the Aiguille du Midi, it was in the “Couloir du Goûter”, a very popular hiking trail, that major rockfalls had been filmed by walkers. On Monday August 21, the Haute-Savoie prefecture called for “great caution” for mountain users.
These subsidences are a direct cause of global warming, according to geomorphologist Ludovic Ravanel, interviewed by France 3. The rise in temperatures causes the melting of permafrost, this thick layer of ice present in and under the mountain, and which maintains the layers of earth and stones between them. “In recent years, we have been able to observe a very strong acceleration of this erosion at high altitude, with significant natural phenomena”, explains Ludovic Ravanel. The thawing of the permafrost, if it were to accelerate, could make certain sections of Mont Blanc impassable.
