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Natural hazards

Cracking cliffs feel the heat

Nature Geoscience volume 9, pages 344–345 (2016)Cite this article

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Rockfall often seems to occur spontaneously without an obvious cause. Monitoring of a granitic cliff reveals that cyclical temperature variations can subtly act to slowly and incrementally damage hard rock until failure is inevitable.

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Figure 1: A rockfall event from El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, USA, that occurred on 11 October 2010.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Valentin S. Gischig is at the Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research (SCCER-SoE), ETH Zurich, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland,

    Valentin S. Gischig

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  1. Valentin S. Gischig
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Correspondence to Valentin S. Gischig.

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Gischig, V. Cracking cliffs feel the heat. Nature Geosci 9, 344–345 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2698

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