Climate change, glacier area reduced by 10% in just two years

Swiss glaciers are experiencing their worst melt this year after a record melt in 2022, reducing their total area by 10% in just the past two years.

Glaciers in Switzerland are shrinking. (Source: Reuters)

The above is the assessment made in a report conducted by the Glacier Monitoring Service in Switzerland (GLAMOS) and published on September 28.

The report shows a steady decline in glacier area during Switzerland's hottest summer on record, with ice loss in the past two years equivalent to the amount lost in the three decades before 1990.

GLAMOS stressed that the situation was "catastrophic". Mr. Matthias Huss, head of GLAMOS, said that 2023 was a "difficult" year for glaciers because of very little snowfall while the summer was too warm. The combination of these two factors is the worst possible scenario.

GLAMOS, which monitors 176 of Switzerland's nearly 1,400 glaciers, said low snowfall combined with a summer melt season that started early and ended late this year had led to large ice losses.

According to statistics, about 50% of the glaciers in the Alps are concentrated in Switzerland, which has witnessed a temperature increase about twice the global average temperature increase due to climate change.

Faced with the rapid rate of ice loss, GLAMOS has been forced to halt one of its small glacier monitoring programmes in central Switzerland due to possible danger.

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