The Swiss glaciers have suffered extremely heavily under the past summer. Not only the persistent heat affected the glaciers. There was also little snow in winter, much of which had already melted away in June. After that, the glaciers lay unprotected in the full sun for months while heatwave after heatwave battered the ice.
5.5 percent of the ice mass melted. That corresponds to 2.5 to 4 meters of the average ice thickness. On the glacier tongues, some parts lost as much as 10 meters. This can be deduced from new figures from the glacier monitoring service GLAMOS and the Swiss Commission for Cryosphere Observation.
"Even on a September morning you can still hear the ice melting," sighs glaciologist Matthias Hüss from ETH Zurich in conversation with NOS, standing on the Gries Glacier in southern Switzerland. It is warm for the time of year and in the background the babbling of meltwater can be heard. "I am quite impressed by that. Normally, the end of September is the moment when melting stops for a few months."
Under Hüss' feet, the small amount of ice still present turns gray. It is reminiscent of the gray ice slush that lies on the roadside after a few days of snow in the Netherlands. Swiss Swiss cheese, says Hüss, pointing to the bare spots at the edge of the glacier. "This is the future. This is what a dying glacier looks like. It is really a sad sight."
The extreme melt measured in 2026 is not even a record. That dates from 2022, when as much as 5.9 percent melted. In third place is 2024, with 4.4 percent. To indicate how drastic the effect of global warming has been in recent years: previously, the annual melt fluctuated roughly between 0.5 percent and 2.5 percent. Anything above that was a significant outlier.
The acceleration of the melt is also visible at a glance when comparing the past decades. In the 1990s, about 10 percent of the glacier ice was lost, in the following ten years 14 percent, and in the past ten years it was already more than a quarter.
The Gries Glacier has become unrecognizable in a relatively short time:
The researchers write that the Alpine glaciers have no chance of surviving these conditions for a long time. They also point out that many small glaciers have already disappeared, such as the Bella Tola this summer.
But larger glaciers are also creeping ever higher. Besides the Gries Glacier, for example, the Rhône Glacier is retreating rapidly. In the aptly named village of Gletsch, the ice is no longer visible.
"I love Gletsch, I find it such a magical place," says Tobias Winkelmann-Klein, whose family has been coming to the village for generations. He is now director of the stately Grand Hotel Glacier du Rhône, which in the nineteenth century still stood right next to the glacier ice.
High in the mountains, it can be seen how fast it went:
The imposing ice view is inextricably linked to the history of the place. "In 1868, British Queen Victoria stayed three days at the Furka Pass," Winkelmann-Klein says. "And in her diary she wrote: 'we drove to Gletsch, along the glacier.' That means the glacier was right by the road. They drank tea at the glacier. You wouldn't believe it: the glacier was really at the hotel."
In photos and prints that Winkelmann collected, the ice was still close by:
Meanwhile, the last piece of ice that was still visible has withdrawn from sight. Winkelmann-Klein regularly visits the areas higher up, where ice still lies, although he has to walk much further than thirty years ago. "I saw the glacier this year from spring to autumn. You see the ice melting and melting and melting. It is so sad."
And that will continue. As long as humans emit greenhouse gases, the glaciers will continue to melt faster, with major consequences for their regions and the rivers they feed. According to the researchers, the Swiss glaciers lost about 2,200 billion liters of water between July and September. For now, all that extra meltwater brings relief in a dry summer like this, but as more ice disappears, that effect will decrease sharply.
For other glaciers, especially outside the Alps, climate measures can still make a big difference. For the Gries Glacier, the outcome is already certain. Hüss: "For this glacier, it is too late. We have to be honest. We should have done something fifty years ago if we wanted to protect it."