Switzerland’s Glaciers Lost More Than 5% of Their Ice in Just One Year

Switzerland’s glaciers lost more than 5 percent of their ice in a single year, with record melt, vanishing glaciers, and almost one-fifth of the nation’s glacier volume now entered simply 5 years.

By September, bare glacier ice extended throughout parts of the Swiss Alps where snow need to still have actually been protecting the surface area from the summertime sun. Even at 3,500 meters, or about 11,500 feet, the seasonal snow cover had actually disappeared, exposing the darker ice underneath and enabling it to soak up more heat. After an uncommonly snow-poor winter season and months of hot, dry weather condition, Switzerland’s glaciers lost more than 5 percent of their overall ice volume in 2026.

Throughout the nation, scientists with GLAMOS, the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network, tracked the losses as part of their long-lasting tracking program. The network, headquartered at ETH Zurich and the universities of Fribourg and Zurich, supplied the measurements for the yearly glacier report from the Swiss Academy of Sciences. Switzerland did not rather match the remarkable melt rates taped in 2022, the measurements revealed another year of extreme ice loss.

Tape-record melt reaches significant glaciers

Meters of ice disappeared from glacier surface areas throughout a single season. Typical glacier density fell by approximately 2.5 to 4 meters, or about 8 to 13 feet, while some glacier tongues lost as much as 10 meters, or approximately 33 feet. The Rhône, Aletsch, and Clariden glaciers were amongst those that experienced their biggest melt on record in 2026.[

Numerous smaller sized glaciers did not make it through the season at all. Bella Tola in the canton of Valais and Griessfirn in the canton of Glarus vanished entirely and completely. Their loss shows a much bigger retreat unfolding throughout the Swiss Alps, where almost 20 percent of the nation’s staying glacier volume has actually vanished in simply the previous 5 years.

A snow-starved winter season set the phase

Winter season had actually currently left the glaciers susceptible before the primary melt season started. The winter season of 2025 to 2026 ranked amongst Switzerland’s 10 least snowy considering that measurements started, leaving less snow offered to insulate glacier ice throughout the warmer months.

Hot, dry conditions then continued from May through September, driving heavy melting even at elevations that typically stay cold sufficient to protect snow and ice.

For 76 days, summer season heatwaves pressed the freezing level above 4,000 meters, or about 13,100 feet. That was more than two times the typical period and a record for Switzerland. With temperature levels staying above freezing so high in the mountains, melting reached locations that would usually keep snow well into the season.[

Meltwater brings a diminishing reprieve

In Between July and September, that melting launched about 2,200 billion liters of water from Swiss glaciers. The volume was more than 4 times the quantity of drinking water utilized by Swiss families in a whole year, momentarily assisting reduce summertime water lacks. The very same overflow brings a caution: every uncommonly big pulse of meltwater comes from ice that will not rapidly return.

As fall reached the high Alps, the exposed glacier surface areas left by the disappeared snow informed the bigger story. Meltwater can briefly fill rivers and tanks throughout hot summertimes, however the frozen reserve feeding that water is gradually diminishing, leaving Switzerland with less glacier ice readily available to melt the next time the mountains deal with another season like 2026.

Referral: “Annual mass balance on Swiss glaciers in 2025/2026” by Matthias Huss, Andreas Bauder, Andreas Linsbauer and Martina Barandun, 1 October 2026, Glacier Monitoring Switzerland
DOI: 10.18752/ annualrep_2026

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