She fell in love with a glacier. A giant of ice encountered as a teenager on the high road between Chamonix and Zermatt, in Switzerland: "I was participating in a trek, and this vision amazed and transformed me," recalls Heidi Sevestre, 35, French glaciologist and member of the Arctic Council. In 2015, with her doctorate on glacial surges (a brutal glacial phenomenon) in hand, she goes to the bedside of the snow-capped mountains. "They are my patients. I measure their constants. And I draw conclusions from them," she explains. A field scientist, she participates in expeditions in the Himalayas, Greenland, Norway, "I have an unlimited attachment to the Arctic." In Spitsbergen, specifically, an island in Svalbard, climate warming is acting "six to seven times faster than elsewhere!".
In this epicenter of climate disruption, she observes glaciers that lose hundreds of meters in length each year. At this rate, she warns, "more than half of them will be doomed before the end of the century!" The cryosphere, a term referring to places where water is present in solid form, "stabilizes the climate, prevents drought episodes, extreme cold, and heavy rains. Preserving it, she assures, is a vital issue." Heidi Sevestre then takes on the role of spokesperson and gives (heartbreaking) lectures on the distress of glaciers. She will soon be found in On the Edge with Alex. Honnold, a mini-series produced by National Geographic and broadcast on Disney+.
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