Meltdown, The Alps Under Pressure, National Geographic Magazine: Countering The Effects Of Climate Change

An attempt to keep snow from melting creates an austere, surreal scene at a ski run in Austria. The Alps are pristine at higher reaches, but the effects of climate change and global warming is seen at lower elevations.  Integral to the local economy, ski resorts must be protected from higher temperatures that melt the ice. Workers are hired to cover the snow pack with a fleece blanket to keep it from melting which seems equivalent to putting a band-aid on a glacier.

The Alpine glaciers — in Austria, Switzerland, France and Italy — are losing one percent of their mass every year and, even with no acceleration in that rate, they will have all but disappeared by the end of the century.

Photograph was published in “Meltdown, The Alps Under Pressure” in National Geographic magazine.

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