‘Explosion of melt rates’: 20% of Swiss glaciers lost in five years
The reduction in ice volume falls just shy of the record set in 2022 and brings the total loss of glacier ice since 2021 to 19.4%.View image in fullscreenGlaciologist Matthias Huss records changes in the Scex Rouge glacier above Les Diablerets, western Switzerland. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/GettyMatthias Huss, a glaciologist at ETH Zürich and lead author of the report, said many people do not realise how fast glaciers are retreating, or that just one generation ago some now-barren sites used to sit beneath hundreds of metres of ice. The scientists have not yet compiled a formal tally of lost glaciers this year but said they had witnessed the death of a number of small ones.“I visited one last week and it’s so impressive to stand in this moonlike landscape where there was a big layer of ice – an extensive glacier – just a few years ago,” said Huss.
- ▪The reduction in ice volume falls just shy of the record set in 2022 and brings the total loss of glacier ice since 2021 to 19.4%.View image in fullscreenGlaciologist Matthias Huss records changes in the Scex Rouge glacier above Les Diabler
- ▪Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/GettyMatthias Huss, a glaciologist at ETH Zürich and lead author of the report, said many people do not realise how fast glaciers are retreating, or that just one generation ago some now-barren sites used to
- ▪The scientists have not yet compiled a formal tally of lost glaciers this year but said they had witnessed the death of a number of small ones.“I visited one last week and it’s so impressive to stand in this moonlike landscape where there w
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| Publication time | Thu, 01 Oct 2026 04:00:27 GMT |
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Rhône Glacier in the Swiss AlpsGlaciers‘Explosion of melt rates’: 20% of Swiss glaciers lost in five years Alpine regions in Europe experiencing extreme glacier collapse due to heat-trapping effects of fossil fuel pollutionAjit NiranjanThu 1 Oct 2026 00.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 1 Oct 2026 00.01 EDTSharePrefer the Guardian on GoogleSwitzerland has lost almost one-fifth of its ice in just five years, research has found, in a dramatic reshaping of the Alpine country whose big white glaciers have been reduced to moonlike rock deserts, scientists say.Swiss glaciers shrank by 5.5% in the first eight months of 2026, according to an annual monitoring report, after a summer of scorching heatwaves that followed a winter with little snow.
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