Can you believe that the height of the Alps increases by 1–2 mm annually? Regardless of your answer: this is a scientific fact! Mountains really grow year after year! What is the reason, we will tell you in today’s post.
The fact that the height of the Alps is increasing, scientists have noted for a long time. But the question of what is the reason for their growth remained a topic of discussion for twenty years. The latest research conducted by an international team of scientists with the participation of the staff of the Center for Geological Research in Potsdam Dick Scherler and Taylor Schildgen proved that in our time the height of the Alps is increased by 90% due to the melting of ice that formed during the last glacial maximum.
Scherler and Schildgen built a model that takes into account all the processes that can lead to the growth of mountains, including drilling at different points in the mountain range. It turned out that over the past 3,000 years the ice cap covering the Alps has decreased by 80%. This means that the load of 62 thousand gigatons disappeared from this point of the earth’s crust! Moreover, according to scientists, melting of ice is not caused by global warming, which is happening now (its duration is extremely small for serious impacts on such a volume of glaciers), but by processes that have occurred since the last glacial maximum that occurred 26 thousand years ago.
How many more amazing transformations are happening on our planet right now and what changes this will lead in the future – we can only guess. But the fact remains: the Earth is a living organism that lives in its own rhythm and by its own laws. And it is amazing and beautiful!
