The unacknowledged risk of Himalayan avalanches triggering

A “universal” model for avalanche triggering, as well as for collapse of suspended seracs, is presented based on Quantized Fracture Mechanics, considering fracture, friction, adhesion and cohesion. It unifies and extends the classical previous approaches reported in the literature, including the role of the slope curvature. A new size-effect, that on mountain height rather than the classical one on snow slab thickness, is also discussed and demonstrated thanks to glaciers data analysis from the World Glacier Inventory (http:// nsidc.org/data/glacier_inventory/browse.html, 2014). The related most noteworthy result is that snow precipitation needed to trigger avalanches at 8,000m could be up to 4 times, with a realistic value of 1.7 times, smaller than at 4,000m. This super-strong size-effect may suggest that the risk of Himalayan avalanches is today still This article was intended for the Special Issue: Fracture Phenomena in Nature and Technology, Vol. 184, 2013. Due to time-constraints this article could not be included in that volume. N. M. Pugno (B) Laboratory of Bio-Inspired and Graphene Nanomechanics, Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, University of Trento, Via Mesiano, 77, 38123 Trento, Italy e-mail: [email protected] N. M. Pugno Center for Materials and Microsystems, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Via Sommarive 18, 38123 Povo (Trento), Italy N. M. Pugno School of Engineering and Materials Science, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK unacknowledged. A discussion on the recent Manaslu tragedy concludes the paper.