- 1ETH Zurich, Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geomatic Engineering, Switzerland (jacquemart@vaw.baug.ethz.ch)
- 2Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Sion, Switzerland
- 3WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, Davos, Switzerland
- 4Climate Change, Extremes and Natural Hazards in Alpine Regions Research Center CERC
- 5Research Institute for Geo-hydrological Protection, National Research Council of Italy
- 6Géoazur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, Université Côte d’Azur
- 7Geotest AG, Zollikofen, Schweiz
- 8Geolab, UMR 6042 CNRS, Université Clermont Auvergne
- 9UMR IGE, INRAE, CNRS, IRD, Grenoble INP, University Grenoble Alpes
- 10Institute for Geotechnical Engineering, ETH Zurich
- 11Institute of Mountain Risk Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering and Natural Hazards, BOKU University
- 12EDYTEM Lab, Université de Savoie
- 13School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences BFH—HAFL, Bern University of Applied Sciences
- 14Climate Change Impacts and Risks in the Anthropocene (C–CIA), Institute for Environmental Sciences, University of Geneva
Anthropogenic climate change is rapidly altering high mountain environments, including changing the frequency, dynamic behavior, location, and magnitude of alpine mass movements. In this project, we gathered literture (∼1995 to 2024, 335 studies) that have leveraged observational records from the European Alps and review (a) to what degree changes in the frequency, magnitude, dynamic behavior, or location of alpine mass movements can be detected in observational records, and (b) whether detected changes be attributed to climate change and are clear enough to improve hazard management at regional scales. We focused our analysis on the mass movements that are most common in the European Alps, namely rockfall, rock avalanches, debris flows, ice and snow avalanches. We found that the clearest climate-controlled trends are (i) an increased rockfall frequency in high-alpine areas (due to higher temperatures), (ii) fewer and smaller snow avalanches due to scarcer snow conditions in low- and subalpine areas, and (iii) a shift towards avalanches with more wet snow. There is (iv) a clear increase in debris-flow triggering precipitation, but this increase is only partly reflected in debris-flow activity. The trends for (v) ice avalanches are spatially very variable without a clear direction. Quantifying the impact of climate change on these mass movements remains difficult in part due to the complexities of the natural system, but also because of limitations in the available datasets, confounding effects and the limits of existing statistical processing techniques.
How to cite: Jacquemart, M., Weber, S., Chiarle, M., Chmiel, M., Cicoira, A., Corona, C., Eckert, N., Gaume, J., Giacona, F., Hirschberg, J., Kaitna, R., Magnin, F., Mayer, S., Moos, C., Stoffel, M., and van Herwijnen, A.: Detecting the impact of climate change on alpine mass movements in observational records from the European Alps, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-16339, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-16339, 2025.
