In the early afternoon of 3 July, a large piece of ice broke off from the Marmolada glacier in the Dolomite Alps in north-eastern Italy with a massive roar, triggering an avalanche of rock and ice that moved at 300 km/h, sweeping up several tourists in its path.

One eyewitness, who narrowly avoided the avalanche, described what he saw as a "sea of ice". Running would have been hopeless. At present, there are seven confirmed victims and eight injured, two of whom are in a serious condition. At least 13 people are missing, both from Italy and other European countries (according to unconfirmed information, they may include Czechs, Germans and Romanians). Experts rule out the possibility of finding anyone still alive. Access to the area is prohibited: the glacier is extremely unstable and dangerous, and there are fears of further avalanches. (...)

What happened at Marmolada could be a wake-up call for Italian politicians. Although it is claimed that the collapse of the glacier could not have been predicted, climatologists, mountain experts and glaciologists agree that climate change is to blame for this tragedy. South Tyrolean resident and mountaineer Reinhold Messner (Reinhold Messner) told a news agency that "pieces of ice fall, of course, because of gravity, but the root cause is global warming, which melts glaciers and increases the probability of ice breaking away".

"This tragedy has a direct connection to climate change," Giorgio Vacchiano (Giorgio Vacchiano), a forestry researcher at the University of Milan with extensive knowledge of the Italian mountains, explained to EUObserver. "The day before the ice broke away, the temperature at the summit of Marmolada reached +10 °C, which is one of the highest temperatures ever recorded," he said.

According to the researcher, the drought that has affected Italy in recent months, as well as the Vaia storm experienced in 2018 or the major floods in Venice in 2019, are significant signs of change. (...)
Photograph by Benjamin Everett used