Greenland: a darker shade of white

Review: a Swiss gallery shows Sebastian Copeland's images of the evanescent ice.

Famous for its rail junction, Olten is separated from the settlement of Qaanaaq in northern Greenland by a full thirty degrees of latitude. 

On an unseasonably warm April afternoon, this made the Swiss town an ideal venue for taking in some arctic photography by Sebastian Copeland, one of the genre’s most prominent exponents. Congratulations to IPFO’s Haus der Fotografie for staging this well-curated exhibition in its homely yet spacious gallery.

Space does matter when exhibiting Greenland. The landscape’s scale demands a corresponding expansiveness in print dimensions. And Copeland certainly comes through here. Many of the photos shown at IPFO have previously appeared in his acclaimed book The Arctic: A Darker Shade of White. Yet they surely gain much when viewed on a scale of metres rather than centimetres.

Intriguingly, Copeland opts for the panoramic format in many of his most impressive images. It might be the limitless horizons of polar landscapes that pull so many photographers in this direction. Tiina Itkonen and Stuart D. Klipper, for example, have used wide-format Technorama-type cameras to put together complete collections (thanks, Snowhenge, for introducing these artists). 

Unlike them, Copeland hasn’t gone the whole panoramic hog. A variety of formats was probably better suited to his book. And they work well for the exhibition too. 

In terms of format, he seems to have chosen a conventional portrait or landscape treatment for most of his iceberg studies. Their scale, scope and lighting are almost painterly. 

Entitled “Breakthrough”, one of these images gets a whole gallery wall to itself (above). And rightly so: to my mind, this study invites comparison with works such as Frederic Church’s famous oil of The Icebergs.

Lighting is equally a key element in Copeland’s portraits of Greenlanders. These are presented in a sepia-toned monochrome that was probably not straight out of the camera. 

It’s worth sitting through the accompanying video about “the making of” these images. This shows how Copeland turned an Inuit village's chapel and schoolroom into a makeshift studio, complete with lights and reflectors. Gearheads will note that he used a Canon DSLR with Zeiss lenses.

The technical quality of his images bears witness to Copeland’s background as a commercial photographer before he turned to expeditioning. It stands to reason that skills honed in product or fashion photography can be turned to account when capturing images of icebergs or Greenlanders. This does raise a question, though – what is the product in these circumpolar use cases?

A partial answer comes from the blurb at the exhibition’s entrance. Against the background of the photographer’s face, suitably ice-encrusted, it reads as follows:

For 30 years Sebastian Copeland has been documenting his expeditions and adventures in the form of books, exhibitions, events and films - transforming himself and inspiring the people and organizations that he comes into contact with. He is a climate analyst, award-winning photographer and aspirational athlete and combines these tools to powerfully communicate the urgency of action on climate change and sustainable growth…

Some have queried motivations of this kind, given the carbon output involved in travelling to places like Qaanaaq. But to leave such misgivings aside – I refer you to fellow blogger Snowhenge to give them voice – a more fundamental critique looms. That is, in an age of climate denial, photography just doesn’t seem to be working as a tool to communicate the urgency of action on climate change.

This isn't for the lack of a lengthy history. Landscape photography in Greenland can be traced back, via luminaries and activists such as Ragnar Axelsson and James Balog, for well over a century. Yet, whatever their merits as artists, none of Greenland's many photographers seem to have exerted so much as a milli-erg on actual policymaking.

Does that mean that photographing icebergs is futile? By no means. As the navigator John Davis said, Greenland is “the place of greatest dignitie”. As such, it cries out to be documented. And one day, or rather sooner, we will be grateful for the diligent work of Sebastian Copeland and his peers.

This brings us to the very beginning of colour photography in Greenland, the Swiss scientific expedition of 1912. By good fortune, their legacy is well preserved. Using both hand-tinted glass slides and Autochrome colour prints, the explorers recorded a world that has utterly vanished – whether coastal glaciers, traditional communities or the Greenlanders they portrayed. And their images have the freshness and charm that is reserved for first-comers.

Recent museum displays have shown that individual images from the 1912 expedition can be successfully printed up to Copeland-ish dimensions and even beyond, as seen below at the Swiss National Museum:

And yet, to my knowledge, nobody in the past century has ever staged a pure photography exhibition showing a decent array of these remarkable pictures. 

Should there be any curators out there who find this curious, please get in touch or drop me a comment below. And together we might perhaps have a go at making it happen.

References and further reading

The exhibition of Sebastian Copeland’s Greenland photographs at the IPFO Haus der Fotografie Olten, Switzerland, runs from 11 April to 19 July 2026. 

IPFO stands for the International Photo Festival Olten, a prominent Swiss photography event featuring exhibitions, workshops and lectures. The organization also maintains the Haus der Fotografie (House of Photography), a permanent venue for exhibitions.

Sebastian Copeland, The Arctic: A Darker Shade of White, Rizzoli International Publications, September 2024.

Arctic dreams in Autochrome: How the polar pioneers pursued photography in colour, One Hundred Mountains (this blog).

Alfred de Quervain, Quer durchs Grönlandeis, 1914, available in German in:

Alfred de Quervain, Quer durchs Grönlandeis: Die Expeditionen 1909 und 1912/13, Eingeleitet von Peter Haffner Mit einem Nachwort von Marcel de Quervain Mit Fotos, Verlag Neue Züricher Zeitung, 1998. 

or in English:

Alfred de Quervain, Across Greenland's Ice Cap: The Remarkable Swiss Scientific Expedition of 1912, with an introduction by Martin Hood, Andreas Vieli and Martin Lüthi, McGill-Queen's University Press, May 2022, with more than sixty colour images.

A meizanologist's diary (106)

2 April: half a day’s flying out of KIX, the map display shows that we’re coasting in over northeast Greenland. Perfectly placed on the shaded side of the aircraft, I turn to the window only to find that it has blacked itself out.

Of course, I realise, we are on one of those notorious craft – let’s just call them buffs – with centrally controlled window darkening. Remonstrating with a flight attendant is not an option, given the airline industry’s current commitment to an intense customer experience.

Konrad Steffen
Portrait by Fridolin Walcher.

Yet somewhere down there, beyond the blacked-out windows, is a coastal glacier named in honour of Konrad Steffen (1952–2020), the Swiss glaciologist who spent his career investigating the dynamics of the Greenland ice sheet. 

About a decade ago, Professor Steffen came to our alpine club in Zurich and explained to us in his quiet, unemphatic way – he was a master of science communication – what would happen if, or rather when, the world’s ice sheets melted. Some years later, he vanished into the depths of the ice sheet he’d dedicated his life to studying.

Location of the Sermeq Konrad Steffen.
Map by courtesy of Leister Expeditions: 2021 and 2022 report.

Later in the flight, kneeling on the floor – with one knee embedded in a bag of garbage to line myself up with the tiny inspection window in the buff’s back door – I do manage a glimpse of the ice sheet scrolling by. Soon other passengers are queuing up to share this intense customer experience. It seems that quite a few of us are fascinated by this land of ice. Alas, it's far too late now for anybody to pay their respects to Koni Steffen's glacier.

Later still, it occurs to me that, rigged in the eclipse though it is, this buff does provide the perfect metaphor for the pickle we’re in. If we can’t handle the idea of seven metres of sea level rise  –  and that is just from the ice sheet right below us  – then it's surely tempting simply to black out the view and pretend none of this is happening ...

A meizanologist's diary (88)

24 November: If they won’t come to us, then we must go to them. And this is why we have to be at a certain rendezvous point by 8am sharp. 

Parking the car in the shadow of a Fukuititan nipponensis – I have mentioned before, haven’t I, the pride we take in our local palaeontology? – we convene with other members of the Sensei’s mountaineering club.

The dinosaur turns out to be a bit of a distraction tactic, for our quest today is purely mycological. An hour later we arrive at a location about which I can reveal only that it is somewhere on Honshu. For obvious reasons, fungus hunters prefer to be vague about these things. 

So, while the sun burns off the last shreds of the morning mists in the valley below, we set off up a wooded ridge led by the club’s president himself.

If you’re lucky, you can sometimes find the button mushrooms known as nameko (Pholiota microspore) floating in your miso soup or in nabe (hot pot) dishes. These were probably cultivated in a dank cellar somewhere. Yet, as with salmon or venison, the wild variants are incomparably more sumptuous than those reared in captivity – hardly surprising when you consider that all cultivated nameko are descended from a single common ancestor.  Hence our annual forays in search of the wild variety.

Nobody is surprised when M-san sights the first nameko. Quite how he has honed his instinct and reputation for sniffing them out must remain a mystery. Like an expert truffle hunter, he seems to have a second sight for their terroir. Gesturing downslope – we are on a ridge wooded with beech, maple and Japanese oak (konara) – he points out some little yellow blobs clustered on a tree trunk.

The mushrooms seem to prefer the shady side of the tree, which makes them harder to spot from our vantage point. We scramble down to take a look and M-san sets to work with scissors to carefully snip their stems. If you just pull them off the tree, a lot of dirt comes with them, explains the Sensei.

Entering into the spirit of nameko-hunting, I dig my boots into the steeply tilting leaf mould and adventure my person yet further down the slope. 

Oh joy, an untouched tree abounding with the little buttons, each a-dripping with its telltale slime (“name” means slippery). One or two have grown to double the usual size, and the largest is garnished with miniature crimson maple leaves, as if presented for my delectation by some high-class ryōtei.

Using a pair of the Sensei’s scissors, I snip carefully at this rich harvest until my Tupperware container is brimming with the sticky trove. 

It’s at this point that I start to appreciate a sinister truth – the tree I’m harvesting is actually dead, and the nameko have colonised its rotting trunk, some even tucking themselves away under its peeling bark.

Looking around, I get the picture. The maple and beech trees on this ridge seem to be in good health, but it’s another story with the oaks (konara), many of which are prematurely bare of leaves. “Nara-gare” (oak wilt) has been documented in Japan since the 1930s, it seems, but outbreaks stayed within limits until the 1980s. Then, starting on the Japan Sea Coast, the disease spread to most of Japan’s prefectures. 

One reason for the pandemic may be that people have stopped cutting down oak trees for firewood in the “satoyama”, the woods bordering on villages. This led to a proliferation of older trees, which are more vulnerable to infestation by the longhorn beetle that carries the nara-gare fungus. And the disease has spread even faster in the hot dry summers of recent years.

Fortunately, it’s impossible to harvest all the mushrooms on this tree: some are out of reach, and my container is too small for the rest. And, anyway, canny fungus hunters leave plenty of mushrooms behind, to ensure next year’s harvest. I work my way back to the ridgeline, stepping over a fallen oak branch, only to find nobody there.

Hollers direct me to a kind of grassy buttress that falls gently from the ridge. Aha, everyone else is working on the mother lode of nameko. Here too, the mushrooms are growing exclusively on the standing hulks of dead or dying oaks. 

The mother lode of nameko
Photo by courtesy of H-san

But these fungi, uniformly small and densely clustered on each peeling trunk, are the top-quality “gokujo”(極上). Everyone is able to take away a shopping bag full, leaving plenty to spawn next year’s harvest.

Back home, the Sensei cooks up nameko-jiru, a rich mushroom soup. The following day, the mushrooms put in a repeat appearance as nameko tsukudani. And there are still enough to freeze for a hot pot later in the week. Well, here’s looking at you, nabe.

Poetry of the ice

Book review: a Swiss glaciologist celebrates the transient icebergs on a mountain lake and explains why they matter.

All across the Alps, glaciers are slumping into lakes and pools of their own meltwater. A typical example is the little glacier at the top of the Geren Pass, a windy gap in the ridgeline above Switzerland’s Bedretto Valley. A crescent-shaped lake formed at its foot at the start of this century, and has been expanding ever since, eating steadily into the remaining ice-field. 

In November 2020, however, something different happened here. As winter comes early at 2,670 metres, the lake had already frozen over by the 26th of the month. Unfortunately, nobody was watching on or around that day when, probably within a few minutes, huge blocks of the former glacier erupted upwards, smashing their way through the surface ice or rafting it high into the air.

The lake on the Geren Pass in September 2020.
Image by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure

What had happened? Within a few weeks, a curious researcher, Giovanni Kappenberger, had skied his way up to the pass to find out. Few could be better qualified to do so. As Kappenberger’s family and given names suggest, his life has spanned the very same Italian and German-speaking regions that the Geren Pass links together. He was born in Italian-speaking Lugano in 1948, but studied natural sciences at Zurich’s Federal Institute of Technology (ETH). While working as a meteorologist for the next few decades, he also kept up his interests in glaciology by helping to monitor the mass balance of the Basodino glacier, Ticino’s largest expanse of ice.

The lake after the "evento catastrofico" of November 2020.
Image from Giovanni Kappenberger: Die Eisberge am Gerenpass

Arriving at the Geren Pass, Kappenberger saw a new chaos of giant ice blocks crowded into the small lake. This couldn’t be a normal “calving” from the end of the glacier, as in other lakes. Instead, he deduced that some kind of “evento catastrofico” was responsible.

Back at the nearby Piansecco hut that evening, he sketched out what must have taken place. The rising lake had progressively submerged the glacier’s tongue over a number of years until the warm summer of 2020 loosened its grip on the rock below, letting the ice break free and float to the surface. And this event was the starting point for Kappenberger’s book, Die Eisberge am Gerenpass: Poesie des Eises (The icebergs on the Geren Pass: Poetry of the ice), published two years later.

Kappenberger's sketch of the "evento catastrofico" that created the new icebergs.
Illustration from Die Eisberge am Gerenpass

Visitors to the pass could now see an extraordinary throng of icebergs jostling each other amid a frozen sea – and thanks to the lake’s low rim, this foreground was set against a backdrop of the Bernese Oberland’s highest peaks, some twenty or thirty kilometres distant. Kappenberger’s next move was to name the largest ice-blocks – Olaf, Irene, Central and so on – so that they could be more conveniently documented. And then he and his colleagues set to work to measure, monitor and record the lake, its water levels, flow rates and its unique icebergs.

The book's back cover
with watercolour by the author.

Or perhaps not quite unique. A submerged glacier tongue has broken free on more than one occasion elsewhere in the Alps, although usually with unspectacular results, as Kappenberger notes. But the icebergs of the Geren Pass were uniquely massive. This they owed to the unusual thickness of the parent glacier, as revealed by a survey with ice-penetrating radar in March 2021.

Between December 2020 and October 2022, Kappenberger made fifteen visits to the Geren Pass. The surveys he and his colleagues undertook, particularly on the lake’s water levels, are summarised in his book, which appeared first in Italian and then in German. 

But the researchers also took the time to enjoy and commemorate the scenery in a generous array of photos and even a watercolour or two. Poems too punctuate the narrative, including verses by Kenneth White (1936-2023), the founder of geopoetics. Kappenberger is delightfully multidisciplinary in his approach, amply justifying the subtitle he gave his book: “Poesie des Eises” (poetry of the ice).

In July 2021, the scientists were even joined by a swimmer who took a dip amidst the icebergs to raise funds for an “IceSwim4Hope” charity. But how much hope is left for the ice on the Geren Pass? The icebergs are already on their way to oblivion – only a few still show their backs above the water at the time of writing – and the glacier’s days too are numbered. Up to 2021, Kappenberger gave it twenty more years of existence; after the ferocious summer heat in 2022, he cut that estimate in half.

The lake in October 2024: few icebergs have survived.
Image by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure

After a decade or two, visitors to the Geren Pass will see only a little round lake. The shape, though not the size, may remind some of the great basin of the Arctic Ocean. Kappenberger is on familiar terms with the High North, having spent two summers in the Canadian Arctic back in the 1970s, studying the Laika Glacier while curious polar bears looked in at the window of his hut. And in the last pages of his book, he draws the parallels between the Arctic seas and the Swiss glacier lakes.

As Kappenberger notes, the Arctic sea ice is shrinking fast, just like its alpine analogue. Once that insulating cover goes, the sun’s energy will beat down on the ocean to even greater effect, further lessening the temperature difference between the Arctic regions and everywhere else. This will weaken the jetstream, causing it to meander more widely (in so-called Rossby Waves) and reinforcing the blocking high or low pressure zones that bring droughts or flooding in their wake.

That outlook may be depressing – especially if we fail to respond to it – but Kappenberger’s approach is far from depressive. In the prologue, he writes that his efforts to document the icebergs’ brief existence and to understand the underlying dynamics seemed to be the best way of celebrating their beauty. It was like this, he suggests, reaching for a parable:

A man walking through a field happened on a tiger. Pursued by the beast, he ran away. When he came to a cliff, he grabbed the roots of a wild vine and lowered himself into the abyss. The tiger gnashed its teeth at him from above. Terrified, the man looked downwards, where he saw another tiger waiting to devour him. Only the wild vine protected him from that fate, and now he saw a couple of mice starting to gnaw at its tendrils. Just then, the man saw a strawberry growing next to him. With one hand, he kept his hold on the vine root and with the other he plucked the strawberry from its stem. My, how sweet it tasted…

Neither this parable or the book itself will appeal much to readers of a denialist persuasion. On the other hand, for those who like their hard scientific facts leavened with a dash of Latin wit, charm and aesthetic flair, Kappenberger’s slim volume is bound to taste sweet.

References

Giovanni Kappenberger, Die Eisberge am Gerenpass: Poesie des Eises, Unterstalden: rottenedition, 2022 (German edition, 203 pages, fully illustrated, translated from the original Italian text). The review copy was sourced from Zurich's specialist mountain book store, Piz Berg und Buch. 

A meizanologist's diary (75)

4 April: Pressure breathing has to be the secret, I decide – normally, I’d have no difficulty in keeping pace with the Sensei but today, every time I snap an image with my mobile phone, it’s all I can do to catch up with the ladies. My, they are moving. What’s more, they’ve been conversing all the way. So, for them, talking must be a form of pressure breathing …

 

Not that altitude is going to be a problem on Iwagomori-yama, one of Tsuruga's Three Famous Mountains. And Alpinist A. the Sensei’s friend, has further truncated its 765.2 metres by parking her car at the top of a pass. The rain has let up, but the trees are still dripping as we start off through the cloud forest of the Rei-Nan coastal range. 

 

Through mist-fogged glasses I observe what appears to be a mixed forest. We scramble up a rock step, its rugosities rough to the touch, which reminds us that the mountain's name could be translated as "Secluded among the rocks". Fragments of this granite strew the path, making the going less slippery than one might expect from the previous day’s downpours. 

 

At about 600 metres, we dip down into a grove of graceful beech trees. Once again, I’m amazed how low this cool temperate-zone species will grow on Fukui’s coastal hills. But for how long will they do so, given the rapid upshifting of climatic zones? It seems that Kyoto University has similar concerns at its Ashiu Forest Research Station, not so far from here. 

In the next decade, the savants warn, the lower limit for the beech trees will rise by three hundred metres, all but wiping them out within the bounds of the Research Station's mountains...

Imaging the ice of yesteryear

Old paintings and photos of two vanishing alpine glaciers have recently been added to an international climate database maintained at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Glaciers are crucial climate indicators, reflecting changes in temperature and precipitation.

The Upper Grindelwald Glacier in 1835
Painting by Thomas Fearnley (National Gallery, Oslo)

Two institutions, Euro-Climhist and the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) collaborated on this effort. Euro-Climhist, housed at the University of Bern, compiles historical climate and weather data, including information on glaciers. The WGMS, based at the University of Zurich, collects and shares standardised glacier data.

In late 2021, Euro-Climhist and WGMS joined forces to preserve and share historical glacier images as part of the Euro-Climhist database. The paintings, photos and maps of the Grindelwald glaciers and Mont Blanc’s Mer de Glace will expand insights into past glacier fluctuations, helping researchers and the public to understand historical climate events and facilitating the assessment of current and future climate trends.

The Mer de Glace and its extent in the c17 (green) and c19 (red)
Reconstruction by S Nussbaumer and R Wolf

Historical glacier images play a crucial role in understanding interactions between glaciers and climate before the days of systematic measurements. Drawings, paintings, prints, and early photographs can document glacier levels dating back to the 16th century, with some help from meticulous analysis and interpretation of image quality.

The 300 or so images of the Grindelwald and the Mer de Glace glaciers, both well studied since the eighteenth century and before, have been enriched with metadata such as the artist’s name, descriptions and dates. Images are categorised into five types: drawings, oil paintings, prints, photographs, or maps, each varying in accuracy. Drawings and photographs are considered most precise, while oil paintings and prints offer valuable insights despite some imprecision.

First known depiction of Lower Grindelwald Glacier
Before 1642, by Joseph Plepp and Matthäus Merian
(Swiss National Library)

The project's pilot team consisted of researchers from the University of Zurich and the University of Bern, blending natural science, art, and environmental history perspectives. The initial series of integrated glacier images showcases the potential of historical images for understanding past climate trends. While the project focused on the Grindelwald glaciers and the Mer de Glace, more images from various regions could provide further insights.

The initiative was supported by MeteoSwiss, the national weather agency, within the framework of Switzerland’s affiliation to the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), which gathers high-quality climate observations worldwide.

The Lower Grindelwald Glacier in July 1826
By Samuel Birmann (Kunstmuseum Basel)

The sensitivity of glaciers to climate fluctuations makes them vital indicators for climate change. Fluctuations in temperature and precipitation directly influence glacier size and mass. The alpine glaciers are shrinking fast due to warming temperatures and less snowfall, with this trend accelerating in recent years.

References

Translated and summarised from the MeteoSuisse blog, “Historische Gletscherbilder ermöglichen Rekonstruktion von vergangenen Gletscherständen”, 18 August 2023.

Related posts

Celebrating the alpine savants

"The most beautiful pyramids of ice"

"Suddenly transported to a world forgotten by nature"

“Some courageous hunter might attempt this route”

Haversacks instead of helicopters

Some years ago, while visiting a mountain hut in the Tanzawa mountains west of Tokyo, we helped solve a logistical problem. Stopping by the river at the mountain’s foot, we filled some bottles with water – the empties had been left out for us on a table – and carried them up to the hut with us. This helped Kusano-san, the hut warden, weather a dry autumn.

Bring your own firewood: the Bietschhorn Hut
Photo courtesy of Academic Alpine Club of Bern

Now some Swiss mountain huts are applying the same bring-it-yourself ethos. The idea here is not to solve a water problem but to cut down on expensive and polluting helicopter flights. Starting in 2021, the Academic Alpine Club of Bern has asked guests to bring up loads of firewood to its Bietschhorn hut from the roadhead at Ried – a small shed has been built there for the logs.

And the guests seem to be obliging. In the 2022 season, visitors to the Bietschhorn hut carried more than a ton of wood up the 1,400 metres of ascent to the hut. Encouraged by this success, the club now plans to provide its Schmadri and Engelhorn huts with woodsheds – in fact, the shed for the Engelhorn Hut will be shared with the Swiss Alpine Club’s Dossen Hut, whose approach path also starts in Rosenlaui.

The SAC Dossen Hut c.1928

Elsewhere, the Swiss Alpine Club is taking a different approach to replacing helicopter flights. For its Gspaltenhorn Hut, for example, it invites its local members to take part in an annual “supply hike” to bring up firewood, syrup and cheese – the fifth such event took place in late June this year. 

The SAC Gspaltenhorn Hut, c.1928

Other SAC huts operate more informally. Visitors ask the hut wardens what they need when booking their stay, then pick up the goods at a local store before starting the approach hike. 

In Switzerland, the bring-it-yourself movement harks back a long way. In the early days of mountain huts, intending guests carried up their own food – and sometimes the fuel too. Then, either they cooked their own meal, or handed the ingredients over to the hut guardian, who cooked for them. There were no helicopters in those days…

References

Barbara Ehrensperger, “Schweiss statt Kerosin: Wie man Berghütten umweltfreundlich beliefert”, Blick newspaper, 14 July.

A great replacement

On Switzerland’s southern edge, the wood’s in trouble

One wet weekend in May, Project Hyakumeizan walked up to an alpine lake in southern Switzerland. From the village, the path led steeply up through green tunnels of chestnut trees, which gave way to graceful beechwoods at about the 1,200-metre mark. After weeks of rain, the trees looked as if they were enjoying life.

Beech wood in Val Cama, Grisons

Appearances may deceive. According to an article in Die Alpen, the Swiss Alpine Club’s bimonthly journal, the chestnut trees of the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino are coping badly with the drought and heat of the last two decades. A fungal disease that attacks their roots is accelerating their demise. Dying trees have to be chopped down and lifted out by helicopter – or they would end up stoking forest fires like the one started near the crags of Ponte Brolla in 2016 by a rock-climber who tried burning his toilet paper.

Edge of the chestnut wood, Cama, Grisons

It’s thought that the Romans introduced chestnut trees to southern Switzerland about 2,000 years ago. For centuries, the chestnuts fed people as well as their animals. And the trees protected the villages, as they still do, from rockfall and mudslides. So losing them will be a cultural as well as an ecological disaster.

As the chestnut woods thin out, interlopers move in. Originally cultivated in gardens, the Chinese hemp palm (Trachycarpus fortunei) is now spreading into the low-altitude woods, where it has no problem with the hotter, drier summers. More invasive still, according to the cantonal foresters who have to deal with it, are the fast-growing trees of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), also an import from northeast Asia.

Forest path above Cama, Grisons

If the chestnut trees can’t be saved – and if the low-altitude forests of Ticino are not to tumble down into a jungle of non-native exotics – then they must be replaced. On a slope near Ponte Brolla – the one that was inadvertently torched by the careless rock climber in 2016 – forest experts from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) are trying out some alternative species.

Silver birches, above Rossa, Val Calanca GR

In this test plantation, oaks, birches and cherry trees have seeded themselves. The foresters have also introduced Austrian oaks (Quercus cerris) and rowans, among others. Not all the trees under trial are indigenous: Atlas cedars (Cedrus atlantica) and Turkish hazels (Corylus colurna) have also been planted. As one of the interviewed foresters said, “We can’t afford to be fussy these days; we need to try out more things.”

References

Anita Bachmann, “Das Bild des Waldes wird sich stark ändern: eine Reportage über Palmen und Kastanien im Tessin”, Die Alpen, 03/23.

"If we don't get to grips with this, we will lose our snowy mountains"

Switzerland’s Sonntagszeitung yesterday interviewed Zurich-based glacier researcher Matthias Huss on why another massive melting of the alpine glaciers is imminent. What follows is a summarised translation.

The Swiss glacier monitoring network GLAMOS, which Huss heads up, has inspected 15 glaciers throughout Switzerland in recent weeks. They regularly survey the major glaciers in April, because the maximum snow depth is reached around this time after the winter snowfalls. 

During last year’s measurements, Huss noticed that again there was alarmingly little snow – a factor that accelerated the historic glacier melt in the disastrous summer of 2022. At that time, more than 300 million tonnes of snow and ice meltwater flowed from Swiss glaciers in a single week in June. That's enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool every five seconds.

"What is happening now is something I have never seen before," Huss told SonntagsZeitung in September 2022. One might think that nature would ease off after such a drastic and record decline. But the new measurements that Huss and his team have taken show the contrary.

Unfortunately, practically all the glaciers are in as bad a condition this year as they were in April 2022, and in some cases even worse. Only in the very west of the country are things looking better. Across Switzerland, the measurements are once again far below average. The condition of the Swiss glaciers is now critical for the second year in a row at the start of the melting period.

So the risk of another record glacier melting is increasing. In 2022, there was as little snow in April as there is now, and that was one of the main reasons for the record melt. But there was also a very warm May, and then a hot summer. It would be less bad for the glaciers if it stays cooler this year, as in 2019 when the melting started late.

Climatologists expect even higher global temperatures this year than in 2022. The risk is very high that we will have another massive loss of glacier ice. If there is no snow in winter, there is no "food" for the glaciers, and the ice has no protective layer when the temperatures rise. This time last year, there was practically no snow on the Findel glacier above Zermatt.

The Findel Glacier above Zermatt in 2009
Photo by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure

It's more or less the same again this year. Again, there is only a thin layer of snow on the Findel glacier, even though these measurements were taken up on the Cima di Jazzi, at 3,800 metres. This also poses a risk for the team taking the measurements, as normally there are several metres of snow up there in April. This covers the crevasses, and the GLAMOS team previously never had to rope up. But last year and this year, the crevasses were hidden under only a thin layer of snow, and there was a danger of breaking through.

Remnants of a glacier collapse, Morteratsch Glacier, 2011
Photo by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure

This year, Huss was also on the Strahlhorn, at over 4, 000 metres – this was the first time that the monitoring programme had made snow measurements at over 4,000 metres. To their astonishment, there was no snow even at these altitudes. The bare ice showed through. It is possible that in May, when it slowly gets warmer, some more snow will accumulate. But we don't know that yet.

This may also be an effect of last year's record melt. In autumn, there was only a glassy, icy surface left on the Strahlhorn instead of a layer of old snow. On this surface, the snow didn't stand a chance in the winds up there. It was simply blown away, and this was seen very impressively.

As this was the first measurement to be made above 4,000 metres, Huss can’t say how often this has happened. But it is clear that at these altitudes the glacier has to feed on snow. Ice is always lost in the lower part, even in cooler years, and this must be compensated for in the upper part. If a glacier receives too little or no snow in winter, then it can't accumulate. So if it's losing mass at 4,000 metres, no glacier can withstand that in the long term. No snow, no glaciers, it's very simple.

It has been raining at lower altitudes for the past week, and there was an appreciable catch-up in snowfall during April. However, the measurements made by GLAMOS show that this was not enough to make up for the overall deficit of the dry winter.

The Jungfraujoch in 2017
Photo by courtesy of Alpine Light & Structure

On the Jungfraujoch (3,463 metres), for example, snow measurements have been taken every year since 1921 using exactly the same method. Up till now, the snow that falls there in winter has always melted only partially in summer, allowing the glacier to accumulate. But last summer, for the first time ever, more snow melted than had fallen the winter before. So for the first time there was a loss on the Jungfraujoch. That was also because there was so little snow in 2022. This winter, however, GLAMOS found even less snow in the same places at the end of March.

In the west of Switzerland this winter, there were some weather conditions in December and January that brought a lot of snow. That's why, for example, the Tsanfleuron glacier near Les Diablerets is even a little above average. But conditions are particularly bad in the southern Valais, in Ticino and in the Engadine. On the Pers glacier right next to Morteratsch, there should be over two metres of snow on the tongue at this time. GLAMOS often found less than one metre.

Of the 20 glaciers that GLAMOS measures precisely, the team had to stop measuring three last year. In 2023, the team will probably also have to give up the measurements on the St Annafirn glacier above Andermatt. Not because the glacier is completely gone, but because it has simply collapsed so much. It is dissolving and is now only covered by debris. It is no longer worthwhile to continue measuring. It would also be too dangerous because of the falling rocks from the unstable rock faces. Last year, boulders were falling continuously.

Switzerland’s small glaciers will be lost, even if global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees, and that is already a huge challenge for the international community. “We have to try to stabilise the climate in such a way that we can at least still save the large glaciers. If we don't manage that, we will lose our snowy mountains. In summer we will have only grey rubble,” Huss says.

Huss is campaigning for the adoption of the Climate Change Act, on which Swiss citizens vote on 18 June. Opponents say that the law is too expensive, that a different path should be taken. Huss comments that “We definitely don't have time to debate for decades. We have been talking about climate change for at least 30 years now. The climate models have been confirmed and we are already suffering from extreme events worldwide. We have to act now.”

“When you stand on a glacier like this, when you go to the same place again and again and see how quickly the landscape is changing, it becomes very clear. And for us in Switzerland, climate protection is also landscape conservation. If we want to preserve our beautiful Alpine panorama, if we still want to ski in winter instead of sliding down white synthetic snowchutes, then we have to stop climate change. As a wealthy country, Switzerland can and must make its contribution here. And we can afford to pay for it. In the long run, this will pay off in any case.”

Reference

Oliver Zihlmann,  «Wenn wir das nicht schaffen, dann verlieren wir unsere weissen Berge», Interview with Matthias Huss, head of GLAMOS (Swiss glacier monitoring programme), published on Sonntagszeitung website on 29 April 2023.