SwitzerlandThe body of a German mountaineer who went missing 37 years ago near the Matterhorn, with his belongings exposed as the ice melted.
The police of the canton of Valais, southern Switzerland, said on July 27 that climbers along the Theodul glacier near the Matterhorn mountain, the iconic mountain in the town of Zermatt, on July 12 discovered human remains and some device.
“DNA analysis helps identify a mountaineer who has been missing since 1986,” police said. “In September 1986, a German about 38 years old was reported missing after climbing the mountain and not returning.”
The belongings of a German climber who went missing 37 years ago were discovered near a glacier in the Matterhorn. Image: CNN Police did not specify the identity of the climber or the circumstances of death. They released a photo of a hiking boot with red laces sticking out of the snow, along with some gear. “The melting glacier sheds new light on the disappearances of several climbers decades ago,” police said. Scientists earlier this week announced July was on track to be the hottest month on the planet in about 120,000 years. “As glaciers melt due to climate change, anything, including people who have fallen into the river or fallen on the river and were buried in snow, will be exposed,” said Lindsey Nicholson, a river researcher tape at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, on July 28 said. “All the glaciers in the European Alps are melting very quickly.” Last year, glaciers in Switzerland recorded their most severe melting rates since records began more than a century ago. Glaciers will lose 6% of their volume by 2022, nearly double the record recorded in 2003. The rate of melting in 2022 is so severe that millennia of buried rock reappears while bodies and even plane wrecks buried in the Alps decades ago are also exposed. “The glaciers are experiencing a long-term melting trend. This trend is expected to continue, with years of low snowfall making the problem worse,” Nicholson said. “The decrease in snowfall is also related to the change in temperature, because what should have been snowing is now raining,” she added. According to research by Carnegie Mellon University in the US published in May, even if the world meets ambitious climate goals, there is still a risk that half of the world’s glaciers will disappear by the end of the century. This. Glaciers play an important role in providing fresh water for nearly 2 billion people and are also the main cause of sea level rise.
