January 2018 was an unusually warm and wet month across the Western Alps, with widespread landslides at low elevations and massive snowfall higher up. This extreme month yields lessons for how mountain communities can prepare for a warmer future.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Relevant articles
Open Access articles citing this article.
-
Recent waning snowpack in the Alps is unprecedented in the last six centuries
Nature Climate Change Open Access 12 January 2023
-
Dry Spells and Extreme Precipitation are The Main Trigger of Landslides in Central Europe
Scientific Reports Open Access 10 October 2019
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Gobiet, A. et al. Sci. Total Environ. 493, 1138–1151 (2014).
Haylock, M. R. et al. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos. 113, D20119 (2008).
Bründl, M., Ammann, W., Wiesinger, T., Föhn, P. & Bebi, P. Der Lawinenwinter 1999: Ereignisanalyse (SLF, 2000).
Stoffel, M. & Huggel, C. Prog. Phys. Geogr. 36, 421–439 (2012).
Zubler, E. M. et al. Clim. Change 125, 237–252 (2014).
Beniston, M. et al. Cryosph. 12, 759–794 (2018).
Eckert, N., Baya, H. & Deschatres, M. J. Clim. 23, 3157–3180 (2010).
Beniston, M. & Stoffel, M. Sci. Total Environ. 571, 228–236 (2016).
Ballesteros-Cánovas, J. A., Trappmann, D., Madrigal-González, J., Eckert, N. & Stoffel, M. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, 3410–3415 (2018).
Castebrunet, H., Eckert, N., Giraud, G., Durand, Y. & Morin, S. Cryosph. 8, 1673–1699 (2014).
Acknowledgements
This Comment greatly benefitted from meteorological records and monthly bulletins made available online by MeteoSwiss, ZAMG (Austria) and Météo France. Gridded daily change signals for temperature and precipitation in Switzerland (CH2011-PLUS) data for the period 2070–2099 were obtained from the Center for Climate Systems Modelling (C2SM) at ETH Zurich. The authors also acknowledge the E-OBS dataset from the EU-FP6 project ENSEMBLES (http://ensembles-eu.metoffice.com) and the data providers in the ECA&D project (http://www.ecad.eu).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Stoffel, M., Corona, C. Future winters glimpsed in the Alps. Nature Geosci 11, 458–460 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0177-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0177-6
This article is cited by
-
Climate change impacts on snow avalanche activity and related risks
Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (2024)
-
Assessing framework of rainfall-induced landslide hazard considering spatiotemporal asymmetry in extreme precipitation indices under climate change
Theoretical and Applied Climatology (2024)
-
How changes in the circulation patterns specific to the solid precipitations can affect these meteorological events in the Alpine stations of the Mediterranean region? Use of the ERA5 reanalyses
Theoretical and Applied Climatology (2024)
-
Recent waning snowpack in the Alps is unprecedented in the last six centuries
Nature Climate Change (2023)
-
Snow avalanche susceptibility mapping using novel tree-based machine learning algorithms (XGBoost, NGBoost, and LightGBM) with eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) approach
Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment (2023)