It's a wrap.Last summer, workers at a mountain ski resort in Andermatt, Switzerland, tried to beat the heat. To keep the sun's intense rays from melting the mountain's glacier glacier, moving mass of ice that survives year to year, formed by the compacting of snow into névé and then into granular ice and set in motion outward and downward by the force of gravity and the stress of its accumulated mass. , they shaded the icy cap beneath a cool plastic wrap. Why the need for a sunscreen sunscreen /sun·screen/ (-skren) a substance applied to the skin to protect it from the effects of the sun's rays. sun·screen n. ? Scientists say that global warming global warming, the gradual increase of the temperature of the earth's lower atmosphere as a result of the increase in greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution. , or an average increase in Earth's temperature, has caused glaciers in Switzerland This is a list of the glaciers in Switzerland. It includes the glaciers' lengths in 1850 and 2002, as well as the canton of Switzerland in which it is located. Name 1850 Length (km) 2002 Length (km) Area km² Canton Allalin 7.6 6. to lose about a fifth of their surface area over the last 15 years. Ski-resort officials hope to prevent summer shrinking of the Gurschen glacier by covering part of it in a white sheet. The cover reflects the sun's warming rays, keeping the ice underneath cold. But even if this summer's experiment is a success, scientists say it's not a permanent solution. "We can't cover glaciers on a large scale," says Mirella Wepf, director of the Climate Campaign at the World Wildlife Fund in Switzerland. "It would be too expensive." |
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