Glaciologist says ice could vanish within 15 years as record summer triggers second-biggest melt on record
Switzerland’s glaciers, which are disproportionately impacted by climate change, have lost nearly 20 per cent of their mass in five years, experts said on Thursday, with 2026 registering the second biggest melt on record.
Swiss glaciers saw 5.5 per cent of their volume melt away this year, the Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland (GLAMOS) network found in a new study, published after a record hot summer preceded by a winter with little snowfall.
“The glaciers this year have lost enormous quantities of ice,” said GLAMOS chief Matthias Huss, describing 2026 as “a catastrophic year”.
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“There will be probably no ice in 10 or maybe 15 years,” he added.
Between 2022 and 2026, the melt rate at Switzerland’s glaciers was “more than twice as high as in any previously monitored five-year period”, the GLAMOS report said, noting an ice volume loss of almost 20 per cent since 2021.
While Switzerland’s glaciers have long been shrinking, the melt has recently sped up dramatically.
While 10 per cent of Swiss ice volume disappeared between 1990 and 2000, 27 per cent was lost in the past 10 years, the report showed.
GLAMOS based its findings on extensive measurements at 23 reference glaciers in September, which it extrapolated to the nearly 1,300 glacial formations still found in Switzerland.
The report comes after a summer where the months of June, July and August were each the hottest ever recorded in Switzerland since measurements began in 1864, according to the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology.
This year, the protective snow cover on the glaciers had already partially disappeared during the June heatwaves, and had completely disappeared by September, even at high altitudes, GLAMOS said.
“Alpine glaciers have no chance of surviving in the long term under such conditions,” GLAMOS said in a statement.
Due to significant melting this year, the researchers even had to reposition measurement stakes – including on the highest-altitude glaciers – further up after the ice melted away in the original locations.
The average ice thickness of some glaciers decreased by 2.5 to 4.0 metres, while the more exposed glacier tongues saw losses of up to 10 metres of thickness over the summer.
Although temperatures were higher this year, the ice loss did not surpass the record set in 2022, since many glaciers saw more snow before the summer melt than they had four years ago.
Less dust from the Sahara Desert also settled on the glaciers this year, allowing more sunlight to be reflected back into the atmosphere rather than being absorbed by the snow.
There were exceptions, however.
Four major glaciers experienced record melting this year, including the iconic Rhone Glacier and the Aletsch – the biggest glacier in the Alps.
As the glaciers retreat, concern was meanwhile growing over the future availability of water resources.
Between July and September this year, the glaciers lost a total of around 2.2 trillion litres of water.
Huss said that quantity was “difficult to imagine”.
“It’s more than four times the annual freshwater consumption of Swiss households,” he pointed out.
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This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), the leading news media reporting on China and Asia.
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