Climate Change

Some 250 million people depend on water from the glaciers of High Mountain Asia, which include the Himalayas, the Karakoram and the central Asian ranges. A study led by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL shows that this largest non-polar ice mass on Earth is in dire condition. The research team has developed a new computational method that can determine the balance between ice accumulation and melt in glaciers with the help of satellite data.

The last ice age, about 20,000 years ago, was significantly colder than previously thought. This is shown for the first time by systematically analysed samples of groundwater collected around the globe and the inert gases dissolved in it. Swiss groundwater from Uster (ZH) also contributed to the results.

In the Alps, it is getting warmer and warmer and spring is starting earlier and earlier. Many species living there can adapt their behaviour as well as their choice of habitat accordingly. But as it is shown in an overview study led by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and the CNRS in France, which also includes numerous results from citizen science projects, these adaptations usually do not take place quickly enough.

EPFL scientists are beginning to understand why corals in the Gulf of Aqaba, along with their symbiotic algae and bacteria, resist higher temperatures particularly well.

An international research team including scientists from ETH Zurich has shown that almost all the world’s glaciers are becoming thinner and losing mass’ and that these changes are picking up pace. The team’s analysis is the most comprehensive and accurate of its kind to date.