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ICE

Dutch skaters saved from Swedish ice floe

Six skaters from the Netherlands were saved from an ice floe on Lake Vättern in central Sweden on Friday after having been adrift for several hours.

Published: 25 February 2011 16:15 CET
Dutch skaters saved from Swedish ice floe

The tour skaters were out on the frozen lake when a massive chunk of ice broke off, leaving them stranded.

The group were winched to safety by a helicopter, with a hovercraft from the Swedish Sea Rescue Society (Sjöräddningssällskapet) also in attendance. No injuries were reported, nor had anyone fallen into the icy waters.

The skaters were then deposited on the island of Visingsö in the middle of the lake, which is Sweden’s second largest body of water.

The Sea Rescue Society then assisted them to the lakeside town of Gränna.

The deep waters of Lake Vättern are notorious for channels opening up in the ice as a result of windy weather and The Local reported earlier this week that a total of ten people had fallen through the ice.

A rapid response from the Sea Rescue Society once again averted serious injuries or death, with victims reporting only cases of hypothermia.

Tour skating is a popular winter pastime for many Swedes. Whereas in the Netherlands skaters followed marked routes on frozen canals and lakes, in Sweden they usually choose their own tours, relying on local advice.

According to Swedish Life Saving Society (Svenska Livräddningssällskapet – SLS) statistics around 10 percent of ice related drownings per annum can be attributed to tour skating.

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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.

Published: 29 April 2021 16:05 CEST
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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