This Year 'Doesn't Look Good' for Switzerland's Glaciers

Climate change appears to be making some of Switzerland's vaunted glaciers look like Swiss cheese: full of holes. Matthias Huss of the glacier monitoring group GLAMOS offered a glimpse of the Rhone Glacier—which feeds the eponymous river that flows through Switzerland and France to the Mediterranean—with the AP this month as he trekked up to the icy expanse for a first "maintenance mission" of the summer to monitor its health. The Alps and Switzerland, which host many of Europe's glaciers, have seen them retreat for about 170 years, but with ups and downs over time until the 1980s, he said. Since then, the decline has been steady, with 2022 and 2023 the worst of all.

Last year was a "bit better," but "this year also doesn't look good," said Huss, a lecturer at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, describing "a clear acceleration trend in the melting of glaciers." The European Union's Copernicus climate center said that last month was the second-warmest May on record worldwide, although temperatures in Europe were below the running average for that month compared to the average from 1991 to 2020. Europe isn't alone. In a report on Asia's climate released Monday, the UN's World Meteorological Organization said reduced winter snowfall and extreme summer heat last year "were punishing for glaciers"—with 23 out of 24 glaciers in the central Himalayas and the Tian Shan range suffering "mass loss."

A healthy glacier is considered "dynamic," by generating new ice as snow falls on it at higher elevations while melting at lower altitudes; the losses in mass at lower levels are compensated by gains above. As a warming climate pushes up the melting ice to higher altitudes, such flows will slow down or even stop altogether and the glacier will essentially become "an ice patch that is just lying there," Huss said.

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This lack of dynamic regeneration is the most likely process behind the emergence and persistence of holes, seemingly caused by water turbulence at the bottom of the glacier or airflows through the gaps that appear inside the blocks of ice, Huss said. "It's not good for the glacier," he added. There are also impacts on agriculture, fisheries, drinking water levels, even electricity as Switzerland gets the vast majority of its power through hydroelectric plants.