2 October : Swiss glaciers are losing ice at an accelerating rate as intense heatwaves combine with reduced snowfall during winter. More than 5 per cent of the country’s glacier ice melted this year, while losses over the past five years have reached nearly one-fifth of the total ice volume.
The findings were published on Thursday in a report by the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network (GLAMOS) and the Swiss Commission for Cryosphere Observation of the Swiss Academies of Sciences.
According to researchers, Switzerland’s glaciers lost around 2.2 trillion litres of water in just three months, from July to September. That is more than four times the amount of drinking water consumed by households across the country in a year.
Matthias Huss, director of GLAMOS, said excessive glacier melting had increasingly become a regular occurrence. Lower snowfall during winter, followed by record temperatures in summer, has made the situation particularly severe.
“We are now entering a new reality where glaciers are disappearing before our eyes as the ice melts,” Huss said.
He noted that extreme conditions were being recorded almost every year. However, this year’s rate of ice loss has not yet surpassed the record set in 2022, when dust carried from North Africa settled on the snow and accelerated glacier melting.
Switzerland’s largest glacier, the Aletsch Glacier, recorded the greatest ice loss this year. The average thickness of Glacier de Tsanfleuron fell by more than four metres. Huss said changes of this magnitude would have been difficult to imagine only a few years ago.
Glacier melt can temporarily ease water shortages during the summer. But as glaciers continue to shrink and the area covered by ice decreases, that benefit will gradually diminish. Researchers fear this could have a significant impact on water supplies in the longer term.
The rapid retreat of glaciers is also raising fresh concerns about the long-term survival of Europe’s ice-covered regions. The accelerating loss of glacier ice is making those concerns increasingly visible.
“We know how quickly the glaciers are melting, so we are not surprised by it,” Huss said. “But in places in the mountains that were once covered with snow, we now see only rocks. That hurts me.”
Source: Reuters