A new study into the effect thawing permafrost may have on ski lift and cable car infrastructure has been published by the environmental science department of Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
Permafrost is defined as soil or rock that has been frozen for at least two years, and with 2015 overall the warmest and wettest on record (followed by the warmest January ever at the start of this year), the amount of mountainous terrain that remains in a permanently frozen state is continuing to diminish.
This has implications for things like lift towers and other infrastructure built on once frozen ground, as well as for rock falls as the ground no longer holds firm.
However, there is much less data available on the amount of permafrosted land that has thawed out compared to that of glacial melt, which has been carefully measured with figures showing that around half of Europe’s glacial mass has gone since 1850, and that in most cases the rate of thawing of the remainder is rapidly increasing.
The Dutch study found that the Alps are warming at the rate of 3.5°C every 100 years – faster than the European average, and the trend is towards more extreme weather, with heavy snowfalls or no snowfalls increasingly the winter norm. It also discovered that snow cover at lower elevations had diminished by about a third, on average, compared to the early 1980s.
In terms of ski lifts, the study showed that a lift in France , for example, has to have its cables realigned at the start of each winter and that structures put in place to hold avalanches have also been found to be affected by “ground creep” due to thawing, with protection nets in Zermatt found to have moved up to 10cm. As a result, new guidelines for construction have been put in place.