Weather
A mountaineer has discovered a beautiful lake high up in the French Alps, but he warned that the lake’s existence is ‘truly alarming’. Bryan Mestre discovered the lake at an altitude of 11,100ft while climbing in the Mont Blanc mountain range.
It’s believed the lake formed from glacial snow that melted during the intense heatwave that affected Europe at the end of June. The problem is that just ten days before he discovered it, the lake wasn’t there.
Time to sound the alarm… The problem here? These two pictures were taken only 10 days apart… It was taken earlier on June 28th, the second one was shared by Paul Todhunter.
Only 10 days of extreme heat were enough to collapse, melt and form a lake at the base of the Dent du Géant and the Aiguilles Marbrées
That I know, this is the first time anything like that as ever happened. Southern Europe and the Alps have been struck by a massive heatwave with temperature ranging from 40 to 50 degrees, the below 0 freezing altitude was as high as 4,700m (15,400ft) and during the day temperatures as high as 10 degrees Celsius (50 F) were felt on top of Mont Blanc 4,810m (15,780ft)…
This is truly alarming glaciers all over the world are melting at an exponential speed…
In an interview with IFLScience, Mestre said that finding the lake was a real surprise because it’s located in the 3,400- 3,500-meter area, well above the snow line (the boundary between a snow-covered and snow-free surface on mountains) in the Alps which is 2500–2800 meters up.
Last June was the hottest June ever recorded on Earth, with the average European temperature more than 2°C above normal. In France, Germany, and Spain things were even hotter with temperatures 6°C to 10°C above normal.
