Laboratory avalanches reveal behaviour of ice flows

Avalanches created in controlled laboratory environments are helping us to understand the potentially lethal processes that these natural disasters unleash, reveals the University of Nottingham. "Ice avalanches from collapsing glaciers are not common in populated areas, but that may change as global temperatures rise. The Ossetia avalanche alerted researchers to the urgency of gaining a better understanding of the processes that control such flows," says Dr Barbara Turnbull, a member of the Fluid and Particle Processes Group in the University’s Faculty of Engineering, in reference to the one hundred million cubic metres of rock and ice that separated from the northern slope of the Kazbek massif in North Ossetia, Russia, killing 125 people and causing widespread damage in September 2002.