Background Articles

In Norway, glaciers are receding faster than ever and potentially will be eliminated by climate change in key tourist destinations.

Global climate warming is most severe in the Arctic. One consequence is a widespread reduction in permafrost. Continuous, stable permafrost can act as a physical glue that helps anchor unstable slopes. Increasingly, scientists are reporting collapse of rock slopes in the High Arctic.

Tons of mud and rock have plunged onto a beach just yards away from homes at Rhodfa Mor on the Gwynedd coast. Another landslide happened in the same area around a month ago, which allegedly caused a tree to crash through a bedroom window.

Midway along the 92-mile road that winds through Denali National Park, at a spot with an elevation of 3,500 feet and spectacular views of the Alaska Range and the braided rivers that flow out of it, an unstable wall of rock, ice, soil and clay rises precariously. The slope into which the road was cut eight decades ago is already collapsing gradually — and there are fears that it could collapse much more suddenly in the future.

On Sunday torrents of water, rock and dust hurtled down a mountain valley in the Uttarakhand state of Northern India. A Himalayan glacier broke below 7,816-metre Nanda Devi, India’s second-highest peak, sweeping away a small hydroelectric project and damaging a bigger one further downstream. One hundred to 150 people were feared dead.

The Department of Civil Protection has raised the level of alert from Uncertain to Dangerous, due to a risk of avalanches. This morning it was found that an avalanche had fallen on the Skarðsdalur Ski area. Nine houses in Siglufjörður will be evacuated.

Barnehage, sjukeheim, rådhus, legesenter, barneskule, vass- og avløpssystem, eit bustadfelt og ei av hovudfartsårene inn til Gjerdrum er sett ut av spel.

Residents of Seyðisfjörður in East Iceland have been returning home this weekend, and it will become clear today whether people from the part of the town that was first evacuated will also be allowed to return home now that the intense rain that caused devastating mudslides in the town, destroying or damaging a dozen houses and completely changing the appearance of the town and the fjord, has passed.

The National Police Commissioner has raised the level of alert for the town. After a week of extreme rainfall, devastating landslides have hit the town of Seyðisfjörður in east Iceland.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Saturday signed a disaster declaration.

Dozens more homes in Haines were evacuated Thursday night as rain continued to saturate the mountainsides near residential neighborhoods.

The region is prime landslide territory and a changing climate - trending toward warmer, rainier winters - is likely to increase the frequency of slides in the future.

Jan Egil Bakkeby had to flee for his life when he suddenly heard it start to crack in the cabin. Soon after, he witnessed the entire building being washed up on water.

Looking at each snow layer tells a story about the winter.

In the Eureka Sound Lowlands on Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg islands, the permafrost is more than half a kilometre deep, and the average air temperature is –19.7 C. But higher summer temperatures have caused the earth to collapse.

Permafrost in some areas of the Canadian Arctic is thawing so fast that it's gulping up the equipment left there to study it.

Climate change has caused a 60-fold increase in active landslides on one Canadian Arctic island.

Increasing ground temperatures in the Arctic are indicators of global climate change, but until recently, areas of cold permafrost were thought to be relatively immune to severe impacts. A new study by Antoni Lewkowicz, a professor in the Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics at the University of Ottawa and published in the journal Nature Communications, however, shows that areas of cold permafrost can be vulnerable to rising summer temperatures.

Officials cited rockfall danger and traffic hazards created by people stopping to fill containers.

Colorado has seen more 2,500 avalanches this season, some larger than any on record.