On a melting glacier in Switzerland, the body of a German climber who had been missing since 1986 was discovered.
The unnamed climber was found earlier this month by other climbers who were traversing the Theodul glacier above Zermatt, close to the nation’s famed Matterhorn summit.
According to the BBC, they discovered crampons and a hiking boot sticking out of the ice.
The body was identified by DNA testing as that of a German climber, age 38, who went missing 37 years prior.
There was supposedly a significant search and rescue effort at the time, but the individual was not located.
A missing person or item is discovered almost every summer across Alpine glaciers as a result of climate change, which causes them to rapidly melt and decrease.
The 1968 plane’s wreckage was discovered in the Aletsch glacier’s thawing ice last year.
The remains of British climber Jonathan Conville, who went missing in 1979, were discovered in 2014 by a helicopter pilot who was bringing supplies to a mountain shelter on the Matterhorn.
Two Japanese climbers who had not been seen since 1970 were discovered on the Matterhorn glacier’s edge the following year.
Even the Swiss-Italian boundary has changed as a result of the ice melting. The drainage split, or the point where melted snow drains off into one country or the other, previously served as the determining factor.
However, the glacier’s retreat last year changed the situation, forcing the two governments to cautiously negotiate a new border.
However, the effects of melting Alpine glaciers go far beyond border disputes and discovered bodies.
They prevent rivers from overheating and killing fish by cooling the rivers with glacier melt water. Additionally, the winter snow they store feeds rivers like the Rhine and Danube, which supply water for crops and nuclear power plants to cool.
The size of Alpine glaciers had shrunk by more than half since 1931, according to glacier scientists in Switzerland last year.
This summer’s record-breaking heatwaves have affected a large portion of Europe, and it is believed that the consequences could be disastrous.