長引く猛暑でモンブラン氷河に崩落危機、２５万トン

【ローマＡＦＰ＝時事】西欧最高峰モンブランのイタリア側の斜面を覆う巨大な氷河の一部が、8月～9月半ばの長引く猛暑の影響で崩落する恐れが高まっているとして、地元自治体が警告している。（写真は西欧最高峰モンブランのイタリア側にあるプランパンシュー氷河の航空写真。クールマイユール当局提供）
　イタリア・バレダオスタ州の町クールマイユールの広報担当者は２５日、観光客に人気のプランパンシュー氷河で、全体の体積の５～６分の１に相当する約２５万トンの氷塊が谷に崩れ落ちる危険が迫っているとＡＦＰに語った。１日当たり平均３５センチのペースで融解が進み、日によっては最大５０～６０センチほど後退しているという。
　クールマイユールの町長は２４日夜、近隣の道路の夜間封鎖と、氷河下方の地域への立ち入り制限を発令した。
　ただし広報担当者は、氷塊がクールマイユールを直撃し「大災害」になるとする報道内容については否定。氷河の下方には「民家はなく、無人のシャレー（アルプス地方の伝統的な木造家屋）が何軒かあるだけ」だとＡＦＰに語った。
　気候変動の影響への懸念が高まる中、アルプス山脈をはじめ世界各地で氷河の融解が問題となっている。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2019/09/27-09:03）

Part of a massive glacier on the Italian side of the Mont Blanc mountain range is close to collapse after accelerated melting in the late summer heat, officials at a nearby town warned Wednesday.
The mayor of the town of Courmayeur has ordered a local access road closed at night and limited access to the region below the glacier, which is popular with tourists, a town spokesman told AFP.
But town spokesman Moreno Vignolini dismissed apocalyptic reports in the media that it was threatening to smash down on the town itself.
Below the glacier, he said, there are no homes, only a few unoccupied chalets.
Part of the Planpincieux glacier in the Aosta Valley is in danger of crashing into a valley running parallel to the Courmayeur valley, said Vignolini.
With the strong heat this summer, there has been between August and the first half of September, an acceleration of the melting of the glacier, at an average rate of 35 centimetres (14 inches) a day, up to highs of 50-60 centimetres on some days, said Vignolini.
The chunk of the glacier concerned, which makes up between a fifth and a sixth of the total and weighs around 250,000 tonnes, was threatening to break away and crash down into the valley, he added.
There is a problem with a part of the Planpincieux glacier located at Val Ferret, which is thought to be falling due to a large fracture between the, say, stable part of the glacier and this part, the mayor of Courmayeur, Stefano Miserocchi, told AFP.
Late on Tuesday Miserocchi ordered the night-time closure of the access road to Val Ferret, on the Italian side of Mont Blanc.
He has banned walkers from the area below the glacier, which is popular with visitors and has three mountain refuges.
Road traffic has been restricted to three limited periods during the morning, afternoon and evening, said spokesman Vignolini. From Friday an alternative route will be available.
- Glacier melt 'unavoidable' -
Experts at the Fondazione Montagna Sicura (Safe Mountain Foundation), who have been monitoring the glacier for the Val d'Aosta region since 2013, alerted local officials to the latest developments.
This glacier is atypical because it's temperate, and so is influenced by the temperature of the water flowing below, which particularly exposes it to the global warming in progress, said the foundation's secretary-general Jean Pierre Fosson.
There had already been unusual collapses at the glacier last October, but it was the more recent detachment of part of it and its accelerated movement that prompted them to warn the mayor, he told the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero.
But he cautioned against alarmism, stressing that the preventive measures taken so far were for an unprecedented situation for a glacier in the region.
While it might break off in a single block, it could just crumble away or not break away at all, he added.
The Foundation monitors 180 glaciers in the Val d'Aosta region and this kind of thing is unavoidable, said Fosson.
Every year we see two square kilometres (0.8 square miles) of ice disappear he said. And it is getting worse with the increasingly hot summers and autumns.
This is the latest of a series of warnings about melting glaciers -- in the Alps and elsewhere -- as concern grows about the effects of climate change.
On Sunday, dozens of people dressed in black attended a symbolic funeral march on a Swiss mountainside to mark the disappearance of an Alpine glacier on Pizol mountain.
A study by Swiss researchers released earlier this month suggested that the Aletsch glacier -- the largest in the Alps -- could disappear completely by the end of the century if nothing was done to rein in climate change.