Europe’s back-to-back heatwaves have stripped Switzerland’s glaciers of their protective winter snow cover far earlier than normal, exposing bare ice to intense summer radiation and setting the stage for what experts warn could be an extraordinary season of glacial loss.
All the snow and ice accumulated last winter by Switzerland’s glaciers melted away by late June, marking the second-earliest arrival on record of the tipping point known as “glacier loss day”, with all further melting between now and October directly shrinking the size of glaciers in the Swiss Alps.Â
Matthias Huss, head of the Glacier Monitoring Switzerland (GLAMOS) network, described the situation as being three months ahead of what would be considered a healthy state, with multiple Swiss weather stations registering new all-time temperature records.
Once the reflective white snow coverage is stripped from the top of a glacier, the darker, more absorbent surface of bare ice is exposed. This absorbs solar radiation far more rapidly, creating an accelerating feedback loop that worsens melting even further.Â
This year has seen 25% less snow replenishing glacier surfaces compared to the 2010–2020 average, and experts note that 2026 bears an alarming resemblance to 2022, by far the most extreme year ever recorded for Alpine glaciers, when melt rates shattered all previous records.
At the Rhone Glacier alone, one full metre of ice melted in the vertical direction within just ten days, illustrating the staggering pace of loss.
The volume of Swiss glaciers has already shrunk by 38% between 2000 and 2024, and Switzerland has lost 1,200 of its glaciers over the past 50 years, leaving only 1,300 remaining. Scientists warn that if warming continues at its current pace, only remnants of Alpine ice will survive into 2100.
