2012/05/01 by Christian Huggel, Simon Allen, Philip Deline +3 · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Cryospheric studies and observations #Climate change and permafrost #Landslides and related hazards #Permafrost #Debris #Geology #Rockfall #Glacier #Landslide #Moraine #Rock glacier #Physical geography #Cryosphere #Rockslide #Geomorphology #Falling (accident) #Earth science #Snow #Climatology #Oceanography #Geography
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2451.2012.00836.x
openalex publication_date 2012/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Many high‐mountain environments of the world have seen dramatic changes in the past years and decades. Glaciers are retreating and downwasting, often at a dramatically fast pace, leaving large amounts of potentially unstable debris, moraines and rock slopes behind. Although in the main invisible to the eye of an observer, permafrost, i.e. rock and debris with permanent zero or subzero temperatures, is thawing. Several slopes have become unstable and landslides potentially related to permafrost degradation have received wide‐ranging attention from both scientists and the media. A number of those landslides can be related to the effects of recent changes in the cryosphere, which are ultimately driven by changes in climatic parameters, in particular temperature and precipitation.