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ICE

Stockholm police issue melting ice alert

Two walkers fell through melting ice on Lake Mälaren in central Stockholm yesterday as warmer temperatures and underwater currents prompted police to issue a melting ice alert.

Stockholm police issue melting ice alert

“We noticed that a lot of people were out on the ice so we issued a warning over the radio,” Christina Johansson from Stockholm police told the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper.

However the warning almost came too late for one couple who fell through the ice near Lilla Essingen in the city centre. The couple managed to climb back up but were brought to hospital suffering from hypothermia.

Anders Wernesten, a spokesperson for the Swedish Life Saving Society said that the ice can be deceptive as the snow covers hidden melted patches. Sluice gates connecting Mälaren to the sea have also been opened recently to lower water levels in the lake, leading to increased currents under the ice.

“With the sun warming the ice from above and warmer current eating into it from underneath, there is a really strong risk of going through the thinner ice,” he told DN.

“All of a sudden you can fall through the crust and end up in a kind of sorbet slush that is very hard to get out of.”

About a quarter of all drowning accidents in Sweden are related to people falling through ice, mainly during spring. Emergency services advise walkers and skiers to avoid going on the ice alone and to bring proper equipment, including ice picks.

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CLIMATE

Germany could ‘lose last glaciers in 10 years’

Germany's glaciers are melting at a faster pace than feared and the country could lose its last ice caps in 10 years, an alarming report said Thursday.

Germany could 'lose last glaciers in 10 years'
The glacier on Germany's highest mountain, the Zugspitze, covered in snow. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Sina Schuldt

“The days of glaciers in Bavaria are numbered. And even sooner than expected,” said Thorsten Glauber, environment minister of the southern region, home to Germany’s ice-capped Alps.

“The last Bavarian Alpine glacier could be gone in 10 years.” Scientists had previously estimated the glaciers would be around until the middle of the century.

But the melting has accelerated dramatically over the last years. Located in the Zugspitze area and in the Berchtesgaden Alps, Germany’s five glaciers have lost about two-thirds of their volume in the past decade.

Their surface areas have also shrunk by a third – equivalent to around 36 football fields.

Issuing a stark warning over global warming, Glauber stressed that the glaciers are “not only a monument of Earth’s history in the form of snow and ice”.

“They are thermometers for the state of our climate,” he added.

A global study released Wednesday found nearly all the world’s glaciers are losing mass at an ever increasing pace, contributing to more than a fifth of global sea level rise this century.

An international team of researchers analysing images taken by a NASA satellite said that between 2000-2019, the world’s glaciers lost an average of 267 billion tonnes of ice each year — enough to submerge Switzerland under six metres of water every year.

The report came as meteorologists in Germany said this April has been the coldest in four decades.

Like elsewhere in Europe, Germany has recorded wild weather in recent years. After a winter in which temperatures plunged well below freezing in February, the mercury rose to 25.9 degrees on April 1 before slipping more than 15 degrees for much of the rest of the month.

Environmentalists blame global warming for the shifts and have been urging governments to do more to halt the damaging trend.

READ ALSO: How Germany is reacting to top court’s landmark ruling

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement countries aim to keep the global temperature increase to under two degrees Celsius, and ideally closer to 1.5 degrees, by 2050.

Climate activists scored a landmark victory Thursday in a case against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government as the Constitutional Court ruled Berlin’s environment protection plan insufficient.

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