News

Melting ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic as well as ice melt from glaciers all over the world are causing sea levels to rise. Glaciers alone lost more than 9,000 billion tons of ice since 1961, raising water levels by 27 millimeters, an international research team under the lead of UZH have now found.

Glaciers have lost more than 9,000 billion tons (that is 9 625 000 000 000 tons) of ice between 1961 and 2016, which has resulted in global sea levels increasing by 27 millimeters in this period. The largest contributors were glaciers in Alaska, followed by the melting ice fields in Patagonia and glaciers in the Arctic regions. Glaciers in the European Alps, the Caucasus mountain range and New Zealand were also subject to significant ice loss; however, due to their relatively small glacierized areas they played only a minor role when it comes to the rising global sea levels.

During this year's European Geosciences Union General Assembly, the 2019 Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists was awarded to Earth scientist Marie Dumont for her outstanding contribution in the field of snow sciences.

The Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Early Career Scientists recognises the scientific achievement, in any field of the geosciences, made by an early career scientist. It is granted to four exceptional early career scientists on the occasion of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly. This year, Marie Dumont, research scientist at the National Centre for Meteorological Research in France, was among the award's recipients.  

The Networks of Centres of Excellence program has announced that the Canadian Mountain Network will receive $18.3 million in funding over five years (2019–2024) to support its ambitious research, training, and knowledge mobilization agenda.

The Canadian Mountain Network (CMN) is an alliance of partners from universities, governments, Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, not-for-profits, and businesses dedicated to the sustainability of mountain environments and communities across the country and around the world.

Microplastics have been discovered in a remote area of the French Pyrenees mountains. The particles travelled through the atmosphere and were blown into the once pristine region by the wind, according to a new study published in Nature Geoscience.

This is just the latest example of the 'hidden risks' posed by plastics that humans cannot see with the naked eye. For now, governments and activists are focused on avoiding plastic litter in the environment, driven mainly by concern for wildlife and worries over unsightly drinks bottles or abandoned fishing nets on beaches. Plastic bag usage has been cut in many parts of the world, and various projects are exploring how to gather up the floating plastic waste in oceans. But little has yet been done to deal with polluting plastic particles that are usually invisible.

A new paper published in the journal Regional Environmental Change explores new challenges being faced by indigenous pastoral communities in the Andes using both satellite data and traditional ecological knowledge. MRI SLC member Elizabeth Jimenez Zamora is among the authors. 

In the Andes, indigenous pastoral communities are confronting new challenges in managing mountain peatland pastures, locally called bofedales. Assessing land cover change using satellite images, vegetation survey, and local knowledge (i.e., traditional ecological knowledge) reveals the multi-faceted socio-ecological dimensions of bofedal change in Sajama National Park (PNS), Bolivia.

New research on how glaciers in the European Alps will fare under a warming climate has come up with concerning results. Under a limited warming scenario, glaciers would lose about two-thirds of their present-day ice volume, while under strong warming, the Alps would be mostly ice free by 2100. 

The study by a team of researchers in Switzerland was published in the European Geosciences Union (EGU) journal The Cryosphere, and provides the most up-to-date and detailed estimates of the future of all glaciers in the Alps, around 4000. It projects large changes will occur in the coming decades: from 2017 to 2050, about 50 percent of glacier volume will disappear, largely independently of how much we cut our greenhouse gas emissions.

As part of our mission to promote research on mountain regions across borders and disciplines through connection and collaboration, the Mountain Research Initiative issued a call for synthesis workshops in December last year. The purpose of this call was to provide funding for workshops that bring together global change researchers in order to address specific topics of interest to the mountain research community.

A total of 14 workshop proposals were submitted and eligible for review by our panel, which was comprised of MRI Principal Investigators, MRI Science Leadership Council members, and the MRI Executive Director. 

Recognizing the need to support and build capacities for regional and global assessment for science-policy processes, the Mountain Research Initiative, University of Zurich, Helvetas, and ICIMOD – in an initiative supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) – have teamed up to launch a call for applications for a mentoring and training program for early career mountain researchers who have an interest in participating in IPCC processes. Application deadline is 12 May 2019.

Newsletter subscription

Login