Peak Of Austria's Stubai Mountains Vanishes - Glaciologists Suspect Climate Behind Melt, Erosion

[hatrack]

BERLIN, Apr 7 (IPS) - The peak of the Stubai Mountains in the Austrian Alps has vanished. It was around a couple of months back, but since then no one can say exactly when it disappeared.

"One day, the mountain top was simply gone," says Gunther Heissel, director of the Austrian Research Centre for Alpine Geology in Innsbruck, about 450km from capital Vienna. Earlier television footage confirmed that the peak was once there, and now is not.

"The glaciers on the Alpine mountains flow 20 centimetres a day due to the melting of permafrost," Heissel told IPS. The pace of the melting is believed to be at least partly a consequence of global warming.

Permafrost is soil that has remained frozen for more than two years. "If it melts down to water, then when the temperatures fall back under zero, it freezes again," says Heissel. "And as ice grows in volume, it cracks the rocks, thus taking away the grounding, and provoking landslides." Similar phenomena are occurring in other Alpine regions, but also in Alaska, Canada, Norway, Russia and the South Pole, Heissel said.

EDIT

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41882