Snow and ice on Swiss glaciers melting at alarming rate amid heatwave, expert says | Glaciers
Swiss glaciers are set to lose enormous amounts of ice due to the heatwave hitting Europe, according to the head of Glacier Monitoring (Glamos) in Switzerland.
Snow and ice accumulated by Swiss glaciers last winter are expected to melt completely by Monday; This will be the alarming second earliest arrival of the tipping point known as the day of glacier loss.
Further melting between now and October will cause glaciers in the Swiss Alps to shrink in size.
In data dating back to 2000, the only time the tipping point came even earlier was in 2022, on June 26. The dire scenario is driven by the current heatwave as well as the heatwave in May; Both come after a winter with poor snowfall.
“We are seeing tremendous ablation, ice melt rates and snow melt rates all over the Alps,” Glamos network chief Matthias Huss told AFP on Friday, with multiple Swiss weather stations recording new all-time records.
“Compared to a healthy situation, we are three months early.”
This century’s milestone was reached on average in mid-August; This is already bad news for the country’s glaciers, which are shrinking at an astonishing rate.
Most of the water flowing into the Rhine and Rhone, two of Europe’s largest rivers, comes from Alpine glaciers.
Huss said he had just returned from the Rhone Glacier and that in the 10 days since his previous visit, “a meter of ice has melted vertically, and in the last 10 days alone a meter of ice has melted.”
“It’s very impressive to see, and that’s just the effect of the heat wave.”
“As you add days with very high temperatures, whether it’s 35°C or 40°C, that’s very bad for the glaciers.”
Huss said the “very poor state of the glaciers right now” was due to a “combination of poor conditions”, including less snowfall and dust from the Sahara Desert in March.
He said 2026 was “surprisingly similar” for glaciers to 2022, which was “the most extreme year ever recorded in the Alps, with melt rates shattering everything we’ve seen before.”
He said that this year, compared to 2010-20 figures, there was 25% less snow that replenishes the surface of the glaciers. Meanwhile, May was warm, causing snowdrifts to disappear sooner.
Glaciers in the Swiss Alps began to retreat about 170 years ago, initially modestly, but melting has accelerated significantly in recent years as the climate has warmed.
The volume of Swiss glaciers shrank by 38% between 2000 and 2024. Switzerland has already lost 1,200 glaciers in the last 50 years, Huss said, and now only 1,300 remain.
“What disappeared were small glaciers, but they were still relevant to the surrounding areas of the Alps,” the glaciologist said.
“If warming continues as it has over the last decade, we will be left with only small remnants of ice by 2100.”
