glacier
The volume loss in the hot summers of 2022 and 2023 corresponds to the total depletion between 1960 and 1990, according to the report
Thu, September 28, 2023, 10:38am BST
According to a report, Swiss glaciers have lost 10% of their volume in just two years.
Scientists say climate breakdown caused by the burning of fossil fuels is the cause of unusually hot summers and winters with very little snow that have caused the accelerated melting. The volume loss in the hot summers of 2022 and 2023 is the same as between 1960 and 1990.
The analysis by the Swiss Academy of Sciences found that 4% of Switzerland’s total glacier volume has disappeared this year, the second largest annual decline since records began. The largest decline was in 2022, when there was a 6% decline, the largest thaw since measurements began.
Visualized: Glaciers then and now
Experts have stopped measuring ice on some glaciers because there is virtually none left. Glacier monitoring in Switzerland (Glamos), which monitors 176 glaciers, recently stopped measurements on the St. Annafirn glacier in the central Swiss canton of Uri because most of it had melted.
Matthias Huss, the boss of Glamos, said: “We only had dead ice left. It’s a combination of climate change making such extreme events more likely and the very bad combination of meteorological extremes. If we keep going like this… we’re going to have such bad years every year.”
He said small glaciers were disappearing due to the speed of ice loss. To prevent Switzerland from losing its ice, emissions must be stopped, he said, but added that even if the world manages to keep warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, it is expected to be only one third of the glacier volume will remain in Switzerland.
This means, he said, that “all the small glaciers will be gone anyway and the big glaciers will be much smaller.” But he stressed that at least “in the highest regions of the Alps there will be some ice and some glaciers that we can show our grandchildren.”
Melting ice reveals relics from World War I in the Italian Alps
The Swiss Alps experienced record warmth this year. In August, the month with the highest melting point, the Swiss weather service found that the altitude at which precipitation freezes reached a new record high overnight: 5,289 meters (17,350 feet), an altitude higher than Mont Blanc. This exceeded last year’s record of 5,184 meters.
The mountain landscape is changing as the ice melts. For the first time in recorded history, Huss has discovered new lakes forming next to glacier tongues and bare rocks protruding from thinning ice. Bodies long lost beneath the ice were recovered as the ice cover shrank.
Swiss records go back mainly to 1960, and for some glaciers even to 1914.
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