Listen "The Lost World of Ice"
Episode Synopsis
The world's glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate. 2022 has been a particularly disastrous year in the Swiss Alps, where new figures show that glaciers have lost 6% of their total volume of ice during this summer's heatwave. Three glacier-measuring stations have had to close this year, as there simply isn't enough ice left to measure. In this programme, Jheni Osman travels to the Alps to see for herself how much the glaciers are retreating. She meets up with Swiss archaeologists, trying desperately to save ancient artefacts which are now emerging from the melting ice, after thousands of years frozen in time. She talks to a mountain leader, who explains that routes used by generations of hikers and mountaineers are now closing, as melting ice makes more and more of them too dangerous to walk on. Jheni asks the head of Switzerland's glacier monitoring team whether anything can be done to save the remaining ice from eventual destruction. She also talks to a cartographer at University College London, who shows her how maps are having to be re-drawn, and even international borders re-considered, to take into account our vanishing glaciers.Produced by Emma Campbell
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