The New Normal - Melting Glaciers in Swiss Alps to
Reveal More Corpses
As global warming due to human-induced climate change melts
glaciers at increasing rates, Swiss police are warning that many
more bodies similar to those found recently will be uncovered by
retreating ice.
The frozen mummified bodies of a mountaineer couple who vanished
some 75 years ago while hiking in the Swiss Alps are only the
harbinger of an expected grisly harvest, as melting ice
throughout the legendary mountain chain reveals more and more human
remains, according to local law enforcement in the alpine country.
Swiss police are now warning that hundreds of corpses of those who
have gone missing in the mountains will be revealed as the ice retreats,
particularly on sunny southern-facing slopes.
Authorities in the fabled Swiss Alps have noted a significant uptick
in human bodies discovered over the past several months alone.
The body of a man who had been reported missing some 30 years ago is
the most recent discovery, as rescue teams last Tuesday freed his
remains after climbers spotted a hand and two shoes sticking out of the
snow on Switzerland's Hohlaub glacier, according to a report from the
Guardian.
Forensics experts in Bern matched DNA from the corpse to a
43-year-old German citizen who disappeared August 11, 1987.
That discovery occurred less than a week after
the bodies of a Swiss
couple were found in another nearby glacier, missing for 75 years.
On Thursday, the body of a passenger involved in an Air India crash
over 50 years ago was discovered on Mount Blanc in the French Alps, a
region suffering from the same warming effects that are causing the
Swiss glaciers to rapidly disappear.
Melting at an increasing rate, glaciers in the mid-European Alps
in 1850 covered some 670 square miles in Switzerland alone. That area
has shrunk by at least half since that time, according to the Guardian.
Swiss police expect that many more bodies will be found.
"The glaciers are retreating, so it's logical that we're finding more
and more bodies and body parts, said a local police spokesperson.
"In the coming years we expect that many more cases of missing
persons will be resolved," the spokesperson added.
Hundreds of people are recorded as having disappeared at one time or
another over the last two hundred years, most trapped in ice, streams or
crevices following an accident or suicide, although a few cases are
thought to be the result of criminal activity, according to Swiss
authorities.
In 2000, Swiss officials began taking DNA samples from the family
members of those missing in the mountains, following their
disappearance.
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