"Researchers spot a vast new crack on a crumbling Italian glacier that killed 11 people earlier this month, as warming temperatures and snow droughts take a toll on alpine icefields."
"The Marmolada Glacier in the Alps of southern Italy, where 11 people died on July 3 when part of the ice collapsed into a massive avalanche, may crumble even more before Europe’s brutally hot summer ends.
Glaciologists are tracking a new crack, about 650 feet long and more than 100 feet wide, that has appeared in a different part of the glacier, intensifying concerns that such unpredictable threats could become more frequent and widespread as global warming intensifies heat waves and deprives the icefields of the snow needed to replenish them. On average, high mountain areas are warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the planet.
In the July 3 collapse, a slice of ice about 250 feet wide and 80 feet high broke off and raced hundreds of feet downhill in an avalanche that crushed hikers on a trail far below the glacier. The sudden disintegration of part of the Marmolada glacier was completely unexpected. Concerns about abrupt glacial destabilization had been growing, however, and were amplified again by hikers in Kyrgyzstan less than a week later when they recorded another massive glacier collapse on July 8 in the Tien Shan Mountains."
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