Before and after images show glaciers vanishing before our eyes

When Matthias Huss first visited the Rhône Glacier in Switzerland 35 years ago, the ice was a short walk from where his family would park the car.

“When I first step on the ice … [was] A special feeling of eternity, Mat says Matthias.

Today, the ice is half an hour away from the same parking space and the scene is very different.

“Every time I come back, I remember how it used to be,” he remembers the glacier monitoring director in Switzerland (Glamolar), “How the glacier looks as a child.”

There are similar stories for many glaciers all over the planet, because these frozen ice rivers are pulling back – fast.

According to a recent report of a World Meteorological Organization, glaciers outside the giant ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica lost 450 billion tons of ice.

This is equivalent to a 7 km long, 7km wide and 7km deep ice block – enough water to fill the 180 million Olympic swimming pool.

“Glaciers are melting all over the world,” Prof I Marzeion from Bremen University Institute of Geography says. “They are now sitting in a climate that is very hostile to them because of global warming.”

The Swiss glaciers have been particularly hit, especially in the last 10 years, lost one quarter of the ice in the last 10 years, the measurements of the glamos that emerged this week appeared.

“It’s really hard to grasp the size of this melting, Dr Dr Huss explains.

But photo – from space and place – tell your own stories.

Satellite images show how the Rhône glacier has changed when Dr. Huss has first visited since 1990. In front of the glacier, there was a lake with ice.

Until recently, Glasiologists in the Alps saw 2% of the ice lost in a year as “extreme”.

Later, 2022 blown up this idea from the water, about 6% of the remaining ice of Switzerland disappeared in a year.

This was followed by significant losses in 2023, 2024 and now 2025.

Regine Hock, Professor of Glaciology at the University of Oslo, has been visiting the Alps since the 1970s.

The changes in his life say “really striking,” but “now what we see is really big changes in a few years”.

The Clariiden glacier in Northeast Switzerland was roughly balanced until the end of the 20th century – as much as snowfall he lost to melting.

But this century quickly melted.

It was too much for many small glaciers, such as Pizol Glacier in Northeast Swiss Alps.

“This is one of the glaciers I’ve observed, and now it’s gone,” says Huss. “Absolutely upset me.”

The photos allow us to look even more in time.

In the south of Switzerland near the Italian border, Gries Glacier withdrew about 2.2km (1.4 miles) in the last century. The place where the end of the glacier once stopped is now a big glacier lake.

In Southeast Switzerland, Persian Glacier fed the larger Mortteratsch glacier, which once flowed into the valley. Now the two are no longer meeting.

And the largest glacier in the Alps, the big Alexch, has declined about 2.3km (1.4 miles) in the last 75 years. Where there is ice, now there are trees.

The glaciers, of course, have grown and shrunk naturally for millions of years.

The glaciers – the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries – part of the small ice age – were regularly.

During this time, many of them were considered cursed by the devil in the Alpine folklore, and their progress was linked to spiritual forces while threatening hamlets and agricultural areas.

There are even tales of the villagers who want the priests to talk to the souls of the glaciers and to move them upwards.

The glaciers began to withdraw a widespread retreat along the Alps in about 1850, but the timing changed from place to place.

This coincided with increasing industrialization, especially when the burning of fossil fuels, especially coal, began to heat the atmosphere, but it is difficult to solve the natural and human causes over time.

Where there is no real doubt, especially the rapid losses of the last 40 years are not natural.

Without People Warm by Planet – By burning fossil fuels and release large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) – glaciers are expected to be roughly stable.

“We can only explain this if we consider CO2 emissions.”

What’s more sober is that this large, flowing ice masses can last decades to fully adapt to the rapidly heated climate. This means that even if global temperatures are stabilized tomorrow, the glaciers will continue to retreat.

“A large part of the melt of future glaciers has already been locked, Prof Prof Marzeion explains. “They delay climate change.”

But everything didn’t disappear.

If half of the ice remaining in the world mountain glaciers can be protected Global warming is limited to 1.5 ° C According to the researches published this year, above the “pre -industrial” levels of the late 1800s Science Magazine.

Our current orbit is directed to warming up to 2.7c of pre-industrial levels by the end of this century-and lost three-quarters.

This extra water enters the rivers and ultimately oceans, means higher sea levels for the coastal population in the world.

However, the loss of ice will be felt especially for fresh water by mountain communities connected to glaciers.

The glaciers look a little like giant reservoirs. They collect water as snowfall that turns into ice in cold, wet periods and release them as melting water in hot periods.

This melt water helps to stabilize river flows during hot, dry summers until the glacial disappears.

The loss of this water source is for anyone who trusts glaciers – irrigation, drinking, hydroelectric and even shipping traffic.

Switzerland is not immune to these difficulties, but its effects are much deeper for the high mountains of Asia, which is called the third polar due to the volume of ice.

Approximately 800 million people rely on the melting waters from the glaciers there, especially for agriculture. This includes the Basin of the Upper Indus River, which serves China, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In regions with dry summers, water -melting water can be the only important source of water for months.

“We see the biggest fragility, Prof says Prof Hock, Prof Hock.

So how do scientists feel when they face the expectations of future glaciers in the world of warming?

“Sadly, Prof says Prof Hock. “But at the same time, also booster. [carbon] Footprint, you can protect the glaciers.

“We have it.”

Top image: Tschierva Glacier, Swiss Alps in 1935 and 2022. Credit: Swisstopo and Vaw Glaciology, Eth Zurich.

Additional reports by Dominic Bailey and Erwan Rivault.