Warmer temperatures might have caused a prehistoric Sicilian volcanic landslide as well as several recent avalanches on the white slopes of Alaska, New Zealand, and the Alps. These two studies are published today in a special issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A investigating the thrust of climate change on geological hazards.
The most prominent feature on Mount Etna is Valle del Bove, a natural amphitheatre over 1,000 times larger than the Colosseum and bounded by kilometre-high cliffs — excavated from the eastern flank of the volcano in a catastrophic collapse. The researchers calculated the amount of time the surface was exposed to extraterrestrial cosmic rays and found that the collapse happened 7,500 years ago, around the time when the weather was warmer and wetter.
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