3rd Swiss Geoscience Meeting, Zürich, 2005

A temperature-dependent reduction in rock-wall stability in alpine permafrost areas, likely induced by changes in atmospheric conditions, has recently been demonstrated both in theory and laboratory experiments (Haeberli et al. 1997, Davies et al. 2001). Most instabilities are expected from warm permafrost areas, which is supported by a study of the thermal conditions of starting zones located in permafrost (Noetzli et al. 2003). The hot summer of 2003 provided additional strong evidence for the re-lation of rock fall and climate change via permafrost thaw. The delineation of the locations of sensitive zones that exhibit critical temperature changes (en-tering a range of ca.-1.5 to 0 °C) and are subjecte