# Detecting the impact of climate change on alpine mass movements in observational records from the European Alps

Mylène Jacquemart, Samuel Weber, Marta Chiarle, Malgorzata Chmiel, Alessandro Cicoira, Christophe Corona, Nicolas Eckert, Johan Gaume, Florie Giacona, Jacob Hirschberg, et al.

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## To cite this version:

Mylène Jacquemart, Samuel Weber, Marta Chiarle, Malgorzata Chmiel, Alessandro Cicoira, et al. Detecting the impact of climate change on alpine mass movements in observational records from the European Alps. EGU General Assembly 2025, Apr 2025, Vienne, Austria. 10.5194/egusphere-egu25-16339. hal-05385273

HAL Id: hal-05385273

https://hal.science/hal-05385273v1

Submitted on 27 Nov 2025

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# Detecting the impact of climate change on alpine mass movements in observational records from the European Alps

Mylène Jacquemart<fnref n="1" />,<fnref n="2" />, Samuel Weber<fnref n="3" />,<fnref n="4" />, Marta Chiarle<fnref n="5" />, Małgorzata Chmiel<fnref n="6" />, Alessandro Cicoira<fnref n="7" />, Christophe Corona<fnref n="8" />, Nicolas Eckert<fnref n="9" />, Johan Gaume<fnref n="10" />, Florie Giacona<fnref n="9" />, Jacob Hirschberg<fnref n="10" />, Roland Kaitna<fnref n="11" />, Florence Magnin<fnref n="12" />, Stephanie Mayer<fnref n="3" />, Christine Moos<fnref n="13" />, Markus Stoffel<fnref n="14" />, and Alec van Herwijnen<fnref n="3" />

Anthropogenic climate change is rapidly altering high mountain environments, including changing the frequency, dynamic behavior, location, and magnitude of alpine mass movements. In this project, we gathered literature (□1995 to 2024, 335 studies) that have leveraged observational records from the European Alps and review (a) to what degree changes in the frequency, magnitude, dynamic behavior, or location of alpine mass movements can be detected in observational records, and (b) whether detected changes be attributed to climate change and are clear enough to improve hazard management at regional scales. We focused our analysis on the mass movements that are most common in the European Alps, namely rockfall, rock avalanches, debris flows, ice and snow avalanches. We found that the clearest climate-controlled trends are (i) an increased rockfall frequency in high-alpine areas (due to higher temperatures), (ii) fewer and smaller snow avalanches due to scarcer snow conditions in low- and subalpine areas, and (iii) a shift towards avalanches with more wet snow. There is (iv) a clear increase in debris-flow triggering precipitation, but this increase is only partly reflected in debris-flow activity. The trends for (v) ice avalanches are spatially very variable without a clear direction. Quantifying the impact of climate change on these mass movements remains difficult in part due to the complexities of the natural

<footnote n="1">¹ETH Zurich, Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geomatic Engineering, Switzerland (jacquemart@vaw.baug.ethz.ch)</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Sion, Switzerland</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, Davos, Switzerland</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴Climate Change, Extremes and Natural Hazards in Alpine Regions Research Center CERC</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵Research Institute for Geo-hydrological Protection, National Research Council of Italy</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶Géoazur, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, Université Côte d'Azur</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷Geotest AG, Zollikofen, Schweiz</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸Geolab, UMR 6042 CNRS, Université Clermont Auvergne</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹UMR IGE, INRAE, CNRS, IRD, Grenoble INP, University Grenoble Alpes</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰Institute for Geotechnical Engineering, ETH Zurich</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹Institute of Mountain Risk Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering and Natural Hazards, BOKU University</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹²EDYTEM Lab, Université de Savoie</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences BFH—HAFL, Bern University of Applied Sciences</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴Climate Change Impacts and Risks in the Anthropocene (C–CIA), Institute for Environmental Sciences, University of Geneva</footnote>
system, but also because of limitations in the available datasets, confounding effects and the limits
of existing statistical processing techniques.