Is It Getting Warmer?

Telegraph - October 15, 2007

First of all, the Mont Blanc in this story is not the famous luxury pens. Rather it is the mountain that the pens were named for. And the mountain really isn’t growing but rather more snow and ice are being added to it, which does factor into the official measurement evidently.

It seems that France has been having warmer summers lately (I didn’t independently verify this) and that has caused more snow and ice to accumulate on the higher elevations of the mountain. This is a known phenomenon that it is not just cold temperature that creates (or eliminates) glaciers but also the correct levels of humidity.

It is doubtful that these increases would counteract any decrease of glacier mass that is occurring at lower altitudes.

A quick note about the article that is linked in the middle of the Telegraph piece. The link reads that a Pacific island "could" be submerged by global warming.  The appropriate word here is "could" which is obvious when you read the article.  It doesn’t appear that anyone has had to abandon their home yet but the leaders of this small island are concerned that it might happen if the sea level rises. My guess is that a title like "Leaders are concerned island may be submerged in the future" would not attract enough readers.

Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in France and western Europe, has grown more than two metres in two years - ironically as a result of global warming, experts have found.

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"The height as well as the volume of Mont Blanc has increased considerably, because the snow has massed on the summit over the last two years," said Philippe Borel, one of the survey team, at a meeting in the nearby resort of Chamonix.

The volume of ice on Mont Blanc’s slopes has almost doubled since 2005 to reach 24,100 cubic metres this year, while snow has built up due to greater frequency of winds and higher temperatures in the summer, believed to be cause by global warming.

You can read the rest of this news story here.

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