This is one of the direct and visible consequences of climate change. Swiss glaciers broke all melting records in 2022, under the dual effects of a dry winter and an intense summer heatwave. Three cubic kilometers of ice have been lost, or 6% of the total volume of Swiss glaciers, reveals a report on Wednesday September 28. A loss of 2% in one year was previously considered “extreme”, according to the Cryosphere Measurement Network expert commission of the Swiss Academy of Sciences.
>> REPORT. “If we have several summers like this, it will be the end of the glaciers”: heat waves threaten the white giants in the Ecrins massif
And it gets worse. “In the short term, the melting cannot be slowed down,” explains AFP doctor Matthias Huss, an expert in the field and head of the Swiss Network for Glaciological Studies (Glamos). If we reduce CO2 emissions and protect the climate, “at best, this could save around a third of the total amount in Switzerland”. Without it, glaciers in Switzerland would be virtually gone “by the end of the century,” he says.
At the end of summer, a headland at the junction of Tsanfleuron Glacier and Scex Rouge at just over 2,800 meters was outdoors for the first time since Roman times. Le Pizol in the east of the country, whose funeral was celebrated in 2019, is now “virtually gone”. At 3000 meters above sea level, in the Engadin in south-eastern Switzerland and in southern Valais, “a 4 to 6 meter thick layer of ice has disappeared, in some cases it is twice as thick as the previous maximum”.
“The damage was catastrophic for small glaciers,” emphasize the Swiss experts. “These developments also show the importance of glaciers in hot and dry years for water and energy supply,” they explain. A crucial point for a country where hydropower provides more than 60% of the country’s total energy production.
The melting of glaciers also has less expected consequences. It is becoming increasingly common for hikers to make a macabre discovery and free the corpses from the ice in which they have been trapped, sometimes for decades, even centuries.