Swiss Glaciers Lose over 5% of Ice Volume in 2026 as Heat Waves, Low Winter Snow Accelerate Thaw
Scientists said 5.5% of Swiss glacier volume vanished as record heat and low snowfall drove some tongues to lose up to 10 meters of ice.
- On Thursday, the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network and the Swiss Commission for Cryosphere Observation reported that Swiss glaciers lost 5.5% of their ice volume in 2026, driven by a record-breaking European heatwave.
- A combination of record summer temperatures and insufficient winter snow drove the "enormous" melting, according to GLAMOS director Matthias Huss. The loss remains slightly below the 2022 record of 6% due to more winter snow cover.
- Scientists estimate Swiss glaciers lost around 2.2 trillion liters of water between July and September alone. Switzerland's largest glacier, Aletsch Glacier, suffered its biggest-ever melt this year, while Glacier de Tsanfleuron lost more than four meters of thickness.
- Known as Europe's "water tower," Swiss glaciers feed major rivers including the Rhine and Danube, but accelerated melt threatens to disrupt hydropower production and agricultural water supplies.
- Huss warned that Alpine glaciers have no chance of long-term survival under current conditions, with warming entirely driven by human emissions. "Now we are in this new world, in this future, where glaciers are just melting away," he said.
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Switzerland’s Glaciers Lost More Than 5% of Their Ice in Just One Year
Switzerland’s glaciers lost more than 5 percent of their ice in a single year, with record melt, disappearing glaciers, and nearly one-fifth of the country’s glacier volume now gone in just five years. By September, bare glacier ice stretched across parts of the Swiss Alps where snow should still have been shielding the surface from [...]
The results of the Institut des Géosciences de l'Environnement confirm those observed in Switzerland. Although 2026 is second to the worst years for glaciers behind 2022, for the largest of them, such as the Sea of Glace or Aletsch, the melting is unprecedented. Since 2021, we deplore the loss of 20% of our giants whose melting rate has doubled.
The melting of Swiss glaciers eliminates 5.5% of its volume in a year. What explains this loss and why released water is only temporary relief.
The Swiss glaciers lost more than 5% of their volume in 2026, one of the worst results ever recorded. To launch the alarm is Matthias Huss, glaciologist, professor at the Zurich ETH and director of the Glamos monitoring network. A snowy winter and the record temperatures between May and September accelerated the melting: on the Scex Rouge glacier three meters of ice disappeared in August and September.
The glaciers of Switzerland, which make up most of the ice in the Alps, have lost 5.5% of their ice volume this year, the second highest percentage drop ever recorded due to heat waves, according to experts.The Alpine glaciers have no chance of surviving in the long term under these conditions, according to a [...]
Europe is the fastest-heating continent in the world. Against this background, the famous ice glaciers in the Swiss Alps, which have existed for centuries, have been melting at an accelerating rate, according to a study by Swiss scientists (.pdf), found that 5.5 per cent of the ice had disappeared in the hot 2026, and that in the last five years since 2021, the volume of ice in Switzerland had fallen by almost 20 per cent, showing how the glacie…
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