Loss of Swiss Glaciers Escalates Due to Hot Summers, Resulting in a 10% Decline in Just Two Years

Switzerland has lost 10 percent of its glaciers in the past two years as hot summers and a lack of snow “dramatically” accelerate ice loss.

A panel of the Swiss Academy of Sciences reports a dramatic acceleration of glacier melting in the Alpine country.

Switzerland is home to the most glaciers of any country in Europe.

In 2023, it lost 4 percent of its total glacier volume, the second-largest decline in a single year, on top of a 6 percent drop in 2022, the biggest thaw since records began, the academy’s committee on cryosphere observation said.

Experts at the GLAMOS Glacier Observatory are looking for a possible extreme melt this year, amid early warning signs across the country’s estimated 1,400 glaciers, a number that is now declining.

Matthias Huss, head of the Swiss glacier monitoring network GLAMOS, checks the thickness of the Rhône Glacier near Goms, Switzerland

Switzerland is home to the most glaciers of any country in Europe

The academy said: ‘The acceleration is dramatic, with as much ice being lost in just two years as was lost between 1960 and 1990.

‘The two extreme years in a row have led to the collapse of glacier tongues and the disappearance of many smaller glaciers.’

Matthias Huss, head of GLAMOS, which took part in the study, said in an interview that Switzerland has already lost a thousand small glaciers, and that “we are now also starting to lose larger and more important glaciers.”

‘Glaciers are the ambassadors of climate change. They make it very clear what is happening out there because they are responding in a very sensitive way to the warming temperatures,” he said.

‘The research once again underlines that there is great urgency to act now if you want to stabilize the climate, and if you want to save at least some of the glaciers.’

The team said the “massive ice loss” stemmed from a winter with very little snow – which falls on the top of glaciers and protects them from exposure to direct sunlight – and high summer temperatures.

All of Switzerland – where the Alps cut a swathe through most of the southern and central parts of the country – was affected, and glaciers in the southern and eastern regions melted almost as quickly as during 2022’s record thaw.

Swiss meteorologists reported in August that the zero degrees Celsius level – the height at which water freezes – had risen to the highest level ever recorded, at almost 5,300 meters (17,400 feet), meaning all Swiss Alpine peaks were experiencing temperatures above freezing point.