Switzerland’s glaciers are vanishing at a startling pace, and scientists say the past five years alone have erased nearly one-fifth of their mass, with 2026 marking the second-largest melt ever recorded.
Glaciers across the country shed 5.5% of their volume this year, according to new findings from the Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland (GLAMOS) network, released after a record-breaking hot summer that followed a winter marked by sparse snowfall.
“The glaciers this year have lost enormous quantities of ice,” said GLAMOS chief Matthias Huss, calling 2026 “a catastrophic year”.
Standing on the Scex Rouge glacier at close to 3,000 metres above sea level, he looked out over an increasingly barren scene.
“This is a glacier that isn’t surviving,” he said.
Matthias Huss walking towards a measuring stake during a visit to record changes in the melting Scex Rouge glacier
“There will be probably no ice in 10 or maybe 15 years.”
He then set about removing a four-metre aluminium measuring stake anchored in the glacier’s centre.
When the stake was installed in late July, it had been fully buried; now, more than three metres of it stands above the glacier’s dull grey surface.
“It’s not that we are surprised, because we know how fast the glaciers are melting,” Mr Huss said.
“But to see the colours of the mountains where there is no snow left, there is just these rocks and these dark glaciers that are a relic from the past… it’s just incredible.”
From 2022 to 2026, Switzerland’s glacier melt rate was “more than twice as high as in any previously monitored five-year period”, the GLAMOS report said, adding that ice volume has fallen by almost 20% since 2021.
Switzerland’s glaciers have been retreating for decades, but the latest measurements show the pace has intensified sharply.
The report found that about 10% of Swiss ice volume disappeared between 1990 and 2000, while 27% has been lost over the past 10 years.
To compile its assessment, GLAMOS carried out detailed September measurements at 23 reference glaciers, then extrapolated those results to the nearly 1,300 glacial formations that remain in Switzerland.
The Weisshorn’s east side glacier where local authorities have increased the alert level following multiple ice break-offs
‘No chance of surviving’
The report follows a summer in which June, July and August each became the hottest ever observed in Switzerland since records began in 1864, according to the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology.
GLAMOS said this year’s early heatwaves in June stripped away part of the protective snow cover on glaciers, and by September that cover had vanished entirely — even at high elevations.
“Alpine glaciers have no chance of surviving in the long term under such conditions,” GLAMOS said in a statement.
The melt was so extensive that researchers were forced to move measurement stakes — including on the highest glaciers — further uphill after ice at the original positions disappeared.
In some areas, average ice thickness dropped by 2.5 to 4.0 metres, while the more exposed glacier tongues lost as much as 10 metres of thickness over the summer.
Rhone and Aletsch Glaciers
Despite the higher temperatures, this year’s loss did not exceed the record set in 2022, because many glaciers entered the melt season with more snow than they had four years earlier.
Another factor was that less Saharan dust settled on the snow and ice this year, helping surfaces reflect more sunlight back into the atmosphere instead of absorbing it.
Still, the pattern was not uniform.
Four large glaciers posted record melt levels in 2026, including the well-known Rhone Glacier and the Aletsch, the largest glacier in the Alps.
As the ice continues to retreat, scientists say worries are mounting about longer-term water supply, since glaciers act as natural reservoirs that feed rivers during warm months.
From July through September, Swiss glaciers released about 2.2 trillion litres of water, according to the report.
Mr Huss said the scale is hard to grasp.
“It’s more than four times the annual freshwater consumption of Swiss households,” he said.
