SWISS:
Glaciers in Switzerland have considerably melted in the last 12 months to record their fourth reduction in the volume of ice in the file, surveillance of the glamos body on Wednesday.
A winter with little snow, especially in the northeast part of the Swiss Alps, followed by heat waves in June, has lost 3% of their total ice mass of this year, the Glamos report and the Swiss commission for the observation of the cryosphere.
“It’s really a lot,” said Matthias Huss, director of Glamos, whose reports cover the hydrological year in October-September.
Although the melting of ice was not as extreme as in 2022 and 2023, when the glaciers lost 5.9% and 4.4% respectively, the trend is clear.
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Switzerland has melted its worst decade of ice, with a quarter of the volume of lost glaciers since 2015, added Huss, speaking with Reuters during a visit to the Rhône glacier in the canton of Valais.
The Rhône glacier was the largest glacier in Europe during the Ice era, but quickly narrowed, losing an average of about 1.5 meters thick this year.
According to Glamos, a hundred glaciers in Switzerland disappeared between 2016 and 2022, and most said that most could disappear by the end of the century.
“Unfortunately, we cannot do much to save the glaciers … They will continue to withdraw anyway, even if the climate is stabilized today,” said Huss.
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But if carbon dioxide emissions had to fall into zero in the world in the next 30 years, then up to 200 Swiss glaciers at high altitude could be saved, he added.
Swiss glaciers less than 3,000 meters above sea level suffered in particular this year. The formerly healthy glacier Silvretta, in northeast of Switzerland, had a huge melting of ice after the lowest amount of snowfall for the region since the measures started about 100 years ago, according to the report.
Huss also warned that the narrowing of glaciers contributes to the destabilization of the mountains. This can trigger avalanches of rock and ice, such as the collapse of the devastating glacier which destroyed the village of Blaten in Valais in May this year.
