Remains of long-lost people are discovered as glaciers melt - Business Insider
Remains of Long-Lost People Are Discovered As Glaciers Melt
- Swiss officials found the body of a climber missing for 37 years after portions of a glacier melted.
- Just last year, another glacier in Switzerland melted enough to reveal a 1968 plane crash.
- Glaciers melting, driven by climate change, may result in extreme sea-level rise, experts say.
Melting glacier ice — a worrying symptom of worsening climate change— is leading to the discovery of people thought lost for decades.
Earlier this month, Swiss officials found the remains of a German mountain climber missing for almost 37 years after a portion of the Theodul glacier melted, local police said Thursday.
The explorer's identity was confirmed using a DNA sample from the human remains, police said. He went missing in 1986 at 38 years old.
This is not the first time melting ice has helped solve a cold case. Last summer, thawing ice on the Chessjen glacier in Switzerland revealed the remains of two people who died following a 1968 plane crash, Insider previously reported.
Back in 2015, Swiss officials found the remains of two Japanese climbers who went missing in 1970 after a portion of the Matterhorn glacier melted, CNN reported at the time.
Experts say melting glaciers could lead to extreme and rapid sea-level rise as the planet continues to warm.
Even if the world reduces carbon emissions to meet current climate goals, glaciers worldwide could lose half their mass by the end of the century, a major study published in January in the peer-reviewed journal Science found.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.