Simon Cook 🏔❄🌊

These low-angle glacier detachments are, mercifully, rare, but can be incredibly destructive. Good review here, though several events since it was published in 2021: tc.copernicus.org/articles/15/...

UTTERLY SURREAL LOW ANGLE GLACIER SLIDE!! 😮😱

On Saturday at 11:00 am, a 2 km-long, 25 m-high, and 150-200 m in width section detached off the Ismoil Somoni Glacier (Tajikistan) and slid down the gorge! 🧊🌊

asiaplustj.info/en/node/354309
📽️ via @volcaholic1

Fractal nature of everything

Random thought. Thailand could pass for a glacier. Nice wide accumulation zone (though struggling in the mid section)

Storm Amy has been record breaking ⚠️

An air pressure of 947.9 hPa was recorded at Baltasound, Shetland, provisionally setting a new UK lowest pressure record for October.

Northern Ireland provisionally recorded its strongest October wind gust on record, with a gust of 92 mph at Magilligan.

Archive images of Schwarzberggletscher, Switzerland, showing the glacier front and its advance to produce a moraine.

Repeat DEMs from the 1974 to 2010 show that the glacier advanced and built a moraine, but that the landscape thawed since the early 1990s.

🏔️❄️New paper: “Multi-temporal DEMs used to quantify the geomorphological impact of a late 20th century glacier re-advance at Schwarzberggletscher, Switzerland”.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#glaciers #climatechange #sfm #geomorphology

Several failed geocaches along the way, but the views were worth it

Left high and dry, this former glacial meltwater channel was carved into the Sidlaw Hills just north of Dundee by the last ice sheet to occupy this region ~20,000 years ago. It’s one of several that i’ve been mapping with students & colleagues over the last couple of years.

Summer 2025 is the warmest on record for the UK Provisional Met Office statistics confirm that summer 2025 is officially the warmest summer on record for the UK.

Met Office stats confirm summer 2025 is officially the warmest summer on record for the UK.

The UK’s mean temp of 16.10°C surpasses the previous record of  15.76°C and pushes the summer of 1976 out of the top 5 warmest summers.

www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/new...

Northwest Scotland is hard to beat

The extent of the deposit from the Birch Glacier collapse over Blatten as seen by newly available high-resolution satellite imagery collected by Maxar! 🛰️

Processed by @wxnb.bsky.social

First heli inspection of what remains of Blatten yesterday evening... 🚁😱🌊

SHOCKING!

Few buildings left are flooded
Little debris flow run through the deposit
Look at the height reached on the counterslope! 😮

🎥 Pomona

The front of the Birch Glacier prior to the catastrophic collapse on 28 May 2025. Image from Pomona Media.

On 28 May 2025, the Birch Glacier in Switzerland catastrophically failed, generating a massive landslide that has partially buried Blatten. So what happens next?
eos.org/thelandslide...

Link here if you are so inclined: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

22:55-ish

NOT VERIFIED, an approximate polygon drawn from media images shows the extent of the Birch glacier collapse above Blatten.

The location of the Lonza River gauge station in Blatten (now out of order)

last 40 days of the Lonza River discharge at Blatten, light blue, about 5m3/s on average

Average flow of the Lonza River at Blatten over the last 30 years. It shows a significant increase from May (average 5.7 m3/s) to June (average 11 m3/s)

Maybe >~100 🏠 buried by the glacier+rockfall collapse in Blatten (polygon quickly drawn from 📷 pomona.ch). Upstream part of village spared. But the Lonza River is now dammed. Over the last month it flew at ~5m3/s, expected to increase 2-3x in June. At 10 m3/s, it's 1M m3 every 28 hours.

Swiss glacier collapse buries most of village of Blatten - BBC News Many homes in Blatten have been flattened after a large chunk of the Birch glacier fell on to the village.

I’ll be on @bbc5live.bsky.social at about 10:45pm UK time tonight discussing the Birch Glacier collapse and the impacts on Blatten, Swiss Alps.

Looks to be a dangerous secondary hazard developing with the blockage of the Lonza River.

#blatten #birchglacier #glacier

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

SPEECHLESS BEFORE / AFTER #BLATTEN

The magnitude of destruction after the 3:24 pm collapse of Birch Glacier is immense! 😱

All the forest has been razed and the ice/wood/debris dammed the Lonza river 🌊

Some buildings of Blatten are buried 🏠

📷 Pomona

Swiss glacier collapse destroys parts of village Numerous homes in Blatten devastated after huge cloud of ice and rubble inundates evacuated town

❄️🏔️⚠️ Glacier collapse in the Swiss Alps has partially destroyed the village of Blatten, which thankfully had been evacuated already.

#glacier #landslide #geohazard

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Fair enough. I should be doing something useful on a Saturday evening rather than being in forever-marking mode

*Strikes

Vacancy: Three-week summer journalism internship at Carbon Brief - Carbon Brief Carbon Brief is offering an exciting opportunity for students, or recent graduates, to work with the team for three weeks this summer.

Vacancy: Three-week summer journalism internship at Carbon Brief

Carbon Brief is offering an exciting opportunity for students, or recent graduates, to work with the team for three weeks this summer.

Deadline: 02 June, 9AM BST

Apply here ➡️ buff.ly/ypeV1mr

Trump seeks to end climate research at premier U.S. climate agency White House aims to end NOAA’s research office; NASA also targeted

FFS 🤦🏻‍♂️

www.science.org/content/arti...

🚨ICYMI: April Newsletter...

Catch the highlights from our recent careers event outreach, celebrate the grant awards for our members, and explore our newly launched website - cryo-exchange.com

Make sure to fill out the form in your inbox to add a profile to the new site! Happy reading❄️

❄️🌊Nice write-up of a Nature Climate Change paper by Jan Kavan et al. on coast development as Arctic glaciers recede. Includes some commentary from me. Enjoyed peer-reviewing the NCC article, writing a 'news and views' piece, and speaking to @ayeshatandon.carbonbrief.org about it all to top it off.

NEW – Global warming is ‘exposing’ new coastlines and islands as Arctic glaciers shrink | @ayeshatandon.carbonbrief.org with comment from Jan Kavan @glaciocook.bsky.social

Read here: buff.ly/1yCsB85

🏔️🌊❄️NEW PAPER in Natural Hazards & Earth System Sciences (NHESS)

Causes, consequences and implications of the 2023 landslide-induced Lake Rasac glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF), Cordillera Huayhuash, Peru.

nhess.copernicus.org/articles/25/...

#glof #landslide #climatechange #climate #hazards

New coasts emerging from the retreat of Northern Hemisphere marine-terminating glaciers in the twenty-first century - Nature Climate Change As marine-terminating glaciers retreat, they reveal new coastlines in many regions. Here the authors use satellite data to quantify these changes for the Northern Hemisphere, finding that between 2000...

Here is the research article (that mine comments on) by Kavan et al.: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Glaciers give way to new coasts - Nature Climate Change Climate change is causing rapid shrinkage of high-latitude glaciers, fundamentally altering the nature of Arctic landscapes. Now, research quantifies the substantial, yet under-reported, development o...

❄️ ⛱️ 🌊 NEW ARTICLE out today in Nature Climate Change: ‘Glaciers give way to new coasts’

This ‘News & Views’ article coincides with the UN International Day of Glacier Preservation. Arctic glacier recession has revealed ~2500 km of new coastline since the year 2000.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

❄️🇺🇳 It’s the UN International Day of Glacier Preservation, so here’s a video of some shrinking glaciers in Iceland 🇮🇸

#iygp #glaciers #ice

Leveraging gridded population data products for enhancing geohazard risk assessment. - Scottish Graduate School of Social Science Spatially detailed population data products in grid-based format have become increasingly abundant in recent years, contribute to a range of geospatial applications. One application is assessing popul...

🏔️🌊 Fully funded #PhD opportunity working with me on predicting the impact of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs).

“Leveraging gridded population data products for enhancing geohazard risk assessment”

Deadline 10 April 5pm.

Funded by @sgsss.bsky.social

www.sgsss.ac.uk/studentship/...