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. In September 2002, one hundred million cubic metres of rock and ice separated from the northern slope of the Kazbek massif in North Ossetia, Russia. The resulting avalanche killed 125 people and caused widespread damage. Ice avalanches can travel great distances at speeds of up to 150 miles per hour, but it is not fully understood how they travel so far or so fast. The difficulty lies in observing the processes within avalanches closely. But by creating a laboratory avalanche one researcher at The University of Nottingham has helped us to understand how melting effects flows of ice — even at temperatures below freezing. Barbara Turnbull, a member of the Fluid and Particle Processes Group in the University's Faculty of Engineering, has found that the same layer of liquid water at an ice particle's surface that helps skaters to skate across an ice rink also enhances ice avalanche speeds.