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NWBasser

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I just found this news article about the poor crumbling Matterhorn.

http://news.yahoo.com/mighty-matterhorn-mountain-crumbling-192905379--abc-news-topstories.html

Any geologist that reads this is going to be laughing pretty hard.

Ice holding the mountain together?? Riiiight.:rollover

Warming the inside of the mountain? Are you kidding me? That only happens to volcanoes.

Erosion happens to big mountains quite naturally.

If anything, I'd expect that warming would lead to less glacier mass and therefore less glacial sculpting. Glaciers chew up mountains pretty hard and less of them on the flank of a mountain means less erosion.
 
That is indeed how some mountains work. Water has been deep in fissures for a long time and frozen, expanded, broken bits away from the rest of the mountain which are still held to the mountain through the ice bond. When it thaws pieces start sloughing off and that is when things get dangerous. It's an odd sensation when it happens because you are looking around for some reason as to why pieces just fell off, but you can see nothing else in the picture. I've thankfully been above a few of those slides when they happen or back at camp and not in the middle of the mountain where they seem to happen most frequently.
 
I just saw something on OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) TV that mentioned the same thing happening to Mount Hood. There are ascents climbers can no longer use because the crumbling rock is too fragile. Seems logical to me.
 
Bookkeeper's Son said:
I just saw something on OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) TV that mentioned the same thing happening to Mount Hood. There are ascents climbers can no longer use because the crumbling rock is too fragile. Seems logical to me.
Click to expand...

On a stratovolcano like Mt. Hood I can see that happening. You have weak layers of ash between lava flows that accumulate water and ice.

I wouldn't expect that much pore space on a limestone peak like the Matterhorn though.
 
Spudman said:
That is indeed how some mountains work. Water has been deep in fissures for a long time and frozen, expanded, broken bits away from the rest of the mountain which are still held to the mountain through the ice bond. When it thaws pieces start sloughing off and that is when things get dangerous. It's an odd sensation when it happens because you are looking around for some reason as to why pieces just fell off, but you can see nothing else in the picture. I've thankfully been above a few of those slides when they happen or back at camp and not in the middle of the mountain where they seem to happen most frequently.
Click to expand...

Spud, I think it's a matter of scale. This does happen to mountains on a small scale, but the article seemed to infer that it's a large-scale phenomenon.

Doh! Gotta go home now. I'll try to explain more later.
 
poodlesrule said:
Limestone on Matterhorn? For real?
I was thinking granite and such. It makes a pretty picture for Swiss chocolate packs though...!
Click to expand...

Ugh, nope. Neither granite nor limestone. This is what happens when you think geology on too little sleep.

It's gneiss. I should have known that.:thwap
 
I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I do happen to have a Master's Degree in Structural Geology. Erosion is accomplished by many processes, some chemical, some mechanical. I think the main tenet of the article is freeze-thaw. That's all. Climate change could lead to more freeze thaw activity in areas that have historically remained frozen 100% of the time. We all know freeze thaw breaks stuff down, e.g., potholes in the road. The whole butter and steak analogy is dumb.
 
Commodore 64 said:
The whole butter and steak analogy is dumb.
Click to expand...

I think that's what set me off. I was incredibly tired yesterday when I posted and didn't read the article thoroughly.

I got the part about the freeze-thaw mechanical erosion increasing, but the butter and steak analogy leads one to believe that the process occurrs throughout the rock mass of the mountain rather than just the outer couple of feet. It came across as rather overblown.

The implications for increased freeze-thaw activity at our porous stratovolcanoes due to warmer temperatures may become problematic. Although at our particular part of the world, it seems like we are cooling rather than warming (just seems that way, glacial retreat says otherwise).

Another implication which I have not seen studied (not aware of anyway) would be the rate of glacial erosion processes under a warming climate. Bigger glaciers do more "digging" into mountains than smaller ones and I'd expect the rate of glacial erosion to decrease substantially. Especially when the glaciers disappear.

Also, enough with the metaphors! Play gneiss everyone!
 
It has to be true... I read it on the interwebz!

Oh, and one break, coming up!
(VH content)
 

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