Swiss glaciers continue to melt at worrying record-pace

Swiss mountain glaciers are experiencing rapid and unprecedented melting due to a combination of low snowfall and rising temperatures.

A newly published report found that over the course of just two years, 10% of their ice volume has disappeared, with 4% lost in 2023 alone, the German TAZ reported.

This level of melting is second only to the record set in 2022 when 6% of glaciers were destroyed. To put it in perspective, Swiss glaciers have lost as much ice over these two years as they did over the three decades between 1960 and 1990. This alarming rate of glacier loss is a stark indicator of the ongoing impacts of climate change.

The publication notes that 2022 had been the worst year for the glaciers, even though the summer of 2003 remains to have been the hottest season, but as that year's winter saw heavy snowfalls the overall volume of melted glaciers was lower.

“The losses we’ve seen in 2022 and 2023 are simply mind-blowing and beyond everything we have experienced so far”, said Matthias Huss, the Head of the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network (GLAMOS), an organization that collects and evaluates glacier data and published its findings on September 28.

“Even though glaciers have constantly and quickly been losing mass for many decades, this is a tremendous acceleration”, he said, adding these extremes “would have been impossible without climate change”.