Glacier Blanket

Q. What's white, half the size of a football field and feels like an everyday kitchen wipe?

A. A glacier blanket.

The glaciers are melting, from the Andes to the Alps to Antarctica; in Switzerland, where many towns depend on winter sports for their livelihood, it's not just a matter of wearing lighter clothing.

The village of Andermatt, a popular ski resort, has purchased a high–tech "blanket" from the Swiss company Landolt to try to slow the thaw.

Haig Simonian wrote about this novel approach to global warming in a story that appeared in the June 14 Financial Times; it follows.

Blanket Coverage Could Put Melting Snow On Ice

In the valley, the thermometer is nudging 30° C.

At the mighty Gemstock summit, almost 3,000 metres above sea level, it is cooler but already nearing 10° in the strong early summer sun.

The drip, drip of the melting snow at the upper cable car station says it all.

Whatever the scientific arguments about global warming, the famous glaciers of Europe's Alps are melting - and faster than ever.

Up on the Gurschen glacier, Andreas Bauder, a glaciologist from Switzerland's Federal Institute of Technology, is measuring temperature and ice thickness.

"Climate is never constant. But predictions for the alpine region foresee a loss of 60 per cent of the ice mass over the next 100 years."

The issues of global warming and climate change have regained international prominence as business leaders have pressed politicians to act at the summit of the Group of Eight industrialised nations in Scotland next month.

Andermatt, a popular ski resort in central Switzerland, has decided to act sooner.

The village and its cable car company, which depend on winter sports for their livelihood, have wrapped part of their glacier in a high-technology protective blanket to stop it melting further.

"The glacier has receded by 20 metres in the past 15 years," says Urs Elmiger, head of administration at the cable car company, which is financing the SFr30,000 (£13,000) project.

"We've racked our brains to come up with solutions - this seemed the best."

Andermatt's problem is not unique.

Across the Alps, rising temperatures have played havoc with many ski resorts and could yet deal a heavy blow to Switzerland's tourism sector, which accounts for 3.4 per cent of gross domestic product.

At the Zugspitze, a popular winter resort in Germany, specialists have tried covering the half-pipe run made each year for snowboarders to limit melting.

In Austria, four resorts dependent on glacier skiing, have begun a scientific study on how best to preserve their most important assets.

Environmentalists scoff at such efforts, dismissing them as mere tinkering rather than dealing with the heart of the problem.

But for those whose livelihoods are being put at risk by global warming, any attempt to retard its impact is a blessing.

The experiments might also have important commercial implications for some specialist textile manufacturers.

Those involved in the Swiss and Austrian trials believe there is significant potential for their products.

No one predicts a market for covering entire glaciers, given the costs and practicalities involved.

But developing materials for particularly sensitive spots could prove a useful sideline and a high-profile marketing tool, says Frank Gross, chief executive of Landolt, the small Swiss company that has developed Andermatt's "blanket".

The white covering, the size of half a football field and anchored to the glacier by deep steel stays, looks and feels like an everyday kitchen wipe.

"I can tell you, its performance is rather different," he says.

"It has to have massive resistance to the sun, to protect the ice below, and immense tensile strength not to tear under high mountain winds. And it has to be light, easy to handle and affordable as well as capable of being re-used each year."

The Austrian experiments are even wider ranging, involving assorted materials and techniques.

Apart from fabrics and foils, the studies - conducted by a public-private joint venture based in Innsbruck and advised by the local university - are also testing techniques such as snow compacting and water injection to retard melting or nurture growth.

"We have a two-year project looking at 20 different materials on four different glaciers," says Andrea Fischer, a glaciologist at the University of Innsbruck.

"Each glacier is different. On each, there is a main test area the size of a football field. Then there are separate, two square metre, spots we've set up to assess differences in pitch and exposure to the sun."

Andermatt will have to wait until late September to know whether its experiment has worked.

If so, less time and money will be required to create the special ramp of snow that has been needed each season to bridge the gap between the cable car station and the shrinking glacier below.

In time, the village and the other resorts facing similar problems could consider "rebuilding" their glaciers by using artificial coverings in a sort of layered cake, although big questions remain about snow adherence and the stability of such structures.

For now, the focus is on whether the fabric will fend off the summer's sun.

"We're already cautiously optimistic. [But] it's too early to be sure," says Mr Elmiger.