Silvia Barbieri, Ph.D. Candidate 40th cycle, University of Trento, DICAM

“The action of heat is always present, it penetrates all bodies and spaces, it influences the processes of the arts, and occurs in all the phenomena of the universe.” 
The Analytical Theory of Heat, Joseph Fourier (1822).

Temperature is the main variable that drives the exchange of heat. The Earth is trapping more energy than it can release. The consequence is a warmer atmosphere which drives the melting of glaciers and ice sheets. Glacier hazards have become more frequent and given the increasing number of hikers climbers and skiers looking for adventures, the study of the dynamics of these events has become a priority. On July 3rd, 2022 at 13:43 CEST, the failure of a small glacier west of the summit triggered the ice avalanche on the Marmolada glacier. The ice wall formed by the failure was 23 m high. The flow was 80 km/h fast and it traveled for 2.3 km. During warm periods, ice transforms into water which strongly interacts with debris and lowers the friction of the sliding mass. The mean temperature in May 2022 was 2.9 C higher than the 1990-2020 average temperature. The fact that no outflow was observed the day before the rupture, led Bondesan et. al (2023) to hypothesize that the cause of the collapse was the heavy hydraulic load formed by the melting ice that was not driven into an englacial drainage network. The overpressure caused hydro-fractures and hydraulic jacking. The water reached the glacier bed and caused an uplift that reduced the friction between the bedrock and the ice above leading to a slide. The implementation of laboratory experiment results and field measurements in numerical simulation will allow us to have a more realistic and accurate interpretation of how temperature influences the stability of glaciers and snowpacks. In this project, I would like to: 

1)    Characterize the  mechanical and hydrological (i.e., permeability) behavior of ice and snowpack masses and their changes with the temperature through laboratory experiments like:

• Uniaxial Compression Test: performing it at different temperatures to determine the deformation characteristics of ice and snow. 
• Creep Test: applying a constant load on ice and snow and measuring the strain over time at different temperatures would help us investigate the long-term deformation of ice and snow under constant stress.
• Fracture Toughness Tests: to assess the resistance to propagation of cracks. 
• Permeability Test which will allow us to estimate the flow rate of water through ice and snow at different temperatures.

2)    Take field measurements such as:

• Temperature and Pressure profile of ice through drilling boreholes. 
• Density profile.

3)    Evaluate the risk of instability of glacier and snowpack masses under the effect of an increasing temperature and an in deep exploration of the water flow in snowpacks and of the flow at the interface between ice and the underlying bedrock in temperate glaciers.