Vatican/Italy - Pope Francis asked the faithful to join in prayer for the victims of an avalanche triggered by the melting of a glacier in northern Italy, highlighting the effects of climate change.

A tweet in Italian, sent from his @Pontifex account on Monday, invoked prayers for all those killed and affected by the tragedy on the Marmolada glacier, in which at least 6 people died and 9 were injured.

"The tragedies we are living because of climate change must push us to urgently find new paths that are respectful towards people and nature,” the Pope tweeted.

The avalanche
Parts of the Marmolada glacier collapsed in the Italian Alps amid record temperatures, killing at least six people and injuring several, at Marmolada ridge, Italy. Some 17 people remain unaccounted for a day after a huge chunk of the Alpine glacier broke off and slammed into hikers in northern Italy on Sunday afternoon.

Nationalities of the known dead haven't been disclosed. Thunderstorms hampered rescue efforts on Monday.

Drones are reportedly being used to look for any of the missing as well as verify safety. Rescuers said conditions downslope from the glacier, which has been melting for decades, were still too unstable to send back teams of people and dogs to dig into tons of debris.

"I hope the numbers stop here,'' said Veneto Gov. Luca Zaia, whose region in northeast Italy borders the Dolomite mountain range including the Marmolada glacier. He spoke in the resort town of Canazei, where a morgue was set up in the ice rink.

Another regional leader, Maurizio Fugatti, said 14 people remained unaccounted for by Monday afternoon: 10 Italians, three from Czechia and one from Austria. Local officials later said that Austrian consular officials had made contact with the Austrian.

Heat wave
Italy has been baking in an early summer heatwave and attention had been focused on the impact of drought on crops on the fertile Po Valley.

"This summer 2022 risks being the perfect storm for glaciers," said Giovanni Baccolo, an environmental scientist and glaciologist at Milan-Bicocca University, noting a lack of winter snow and a ferociously hot start to summer.

"High elevation glaciers such as the Marmolada are often steep and relying on cold temperatures below zero degrees Celsius to keep them stable," said Poul Christoffersen, professor in Glaciology at the University of Cambridge.

"But climate change means more and more meltwater, which releases heat that warms up the ice if the water re-freezes, or even worse: lifting up the glacier from the rock below and causing a sudden unstable collapse," he added.

The glacier, in the Marmolada range, is the largest in the Dolomite mountains in northeastern Italy. It has reportedly been rapidly melting away over the past decades, with much of its volume gone.

Experts at Italy’s state-run CNR research center estimated a couple of years ago that the glacier won’t exist anymore within 25-30 years.
-VN/Reuters