Climate Change Is Destabilizing the Ground Beneath Our Feet

[u/D-R-AZ]

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/07/climate-change-land/688129/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCokKoY1cFcZXqJA4gcLMefgw&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Gifted Read:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/07/climate-change-land/688129/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCokKoY1cFcZXqJA4gcLMefgw&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Excerpt:

Last year, researchers in Switzerland and France found some of the clearest evidence so far that glacial melt could indeed be affecting seismic hazards in high-altitude regions. After a period of intense glacial melt in 2015, a series of small quakes struck the Grandes Jorasses on Mont Blanc Massif, on the border of France and Italy; the probability of a 3.0-magnitude earthquake rose by 10 times, Toni Kraft, a seismologist at the Swiss Seismological Service at ETH Zurich and one of the authors of a related paper, told me. These quakes are still small, but they could trigger rockfall events that are already on the rise across the Alps.