Marmolada, Luca Mercalli: it can happen again. But the Alps cannot be locked down

Rome, 3 July 2022 – Collapse on the Marmolada, a massacre. Luca Mercalli, climatologist and scientific popularizer, in 2019 had made a gloomy forecast on that glacier. In 50 years it will be a memory, he had said. Yesterday at the summit, at 3,500 meters, 10 degrees were recorded. Could access be closed to mountaineers? “Impossible, then the Alps should be locked down in five countries, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. Temperatures are not enough to alarm. Otherwise we would have to close all the mountains. It was up to individual mountaineers to understand that there were conditions of risk. Glaciers are dangerous. Even for falls into crevasses, for example “. Could it have been foreseen? “No, there was no way to predict the here and now. I could have been up there too. As an authority, however, I would have done one thing. I would have put a warning, an invitation to be cautious “. Can it happen again? “Of course. The conditions this year are very special “. Does prolonged heat damage glaciers? “That’s exactly the problem. The glaciers have been under stress for a month and a half “. Here the link with the data on the glaciers The videos of the avalanche are impressive. What idea did you get? “The high temperature may have triggered the collapse of the serac. Who dragged himself behind the rocks. But the seracs can fall even in the middle of winter, it has already happened. And there have already been temperatures like those recorded yesterday at the summit “. Less than 70% of snow. The glaciers, is the alarm of the experts, now have a gray color, due to the absence of ‘raw material’. “It’s the color we usually see in late August. But I repeat: the Alps cannot be locked down “. …