‘Explosion of melt rates’: 20% of Swiss glaciers lost in five years
A new report indicates that Switzerland has lost nearly 20% of its glacier ice volume over the last five years due to extreme heatwaves and climate change. Scientists describe the affected areas as increasingly resembling barren, moonlike rock deserts.
Why it matters
The rapid disappearance of Alpine glaciers serves as a stark indicator of the accelerating impact of climate change on European ecosystems.
Rhône Glacier in the Swiss Alps Glaciers ‘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 pollution
Prefer the Guardian on Google Switzerland 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. 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%.
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