Avalanches play an important role in the survival of many glaciers. In some regions, more than one fifth of the snow covering them comes from avalanches, according to a new global analysis by Swiss researchers. + Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox "I would never have imagined that this effect would be so pronounced on a global scale," said Marin Kneib, researcher at the Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape (WSL), quoted in a statement on Wednesday. For the first time, researchers have estimated - for all of the more than 200,000 glaciers scattered across the planet - how much avalanches contribute to snow accumulation and thus to their mass balance, which is the difference between ice accumulation and melting. According to the survey, published in the open-access scientific journal Nature Communications, along the Alps about 11% of glacier snow comes from avalanches; in the eastern Himalayas the share rises to 19%, and in New Zealand it even ...
