Climate change and natural hazards in the Alps.
Abstract
Under the effects of climate change, alpine mountainous regions register fast and well‐perceptible
evolutions that are causing a growing attention of people, scientists and managers. For better coping
with hazards and vulnerabilities specific to these territories, the current national and European public
policies in the alpine countries now prescribe adapting natural hazards prevention to climate change.
This paper proposes a review of recent advances in knowledge on perceived, measured and
projected changes in i) climate patterns, ii) cryosphere, hydrosystems and geomorphological
dynamics on alpine slopes, iii) natural hazards evolution and induced risks at the scale of the French
Alps. We give a brief overview of new results achieved in research, cooperation and capitalization
projects on these thematic fields during the programmatic period 2007‐2013, that are made
available on databases, thematic knowledge platforms and observatories developed by different
scientific and technical operators in the larger framework of the European alpine arc. We illustrate
this renewed synthesis by published examples of hydro‐gravitational hazards activity chronicles,
along with climate patterns identified as “predictors”.