Glaciers expected to vanish completely by Monday — nearly two months ahead of schedule

The Swiss Alps [Yonhap]
The Swiss Alps [Yonhap]

By Ahn Hyo-jung, The Herald Business

A record-breaking heat wave sweeping Europe has in effect melted all the snow and ice that accumulated on the Swiss Alps last winter, scientists say.

According to AFP and Swiss broadcaster SRF, GLAMOS, the glacier monitoring team at ETH Zurich, estimates that the winter snowpack on the Swiss Alps will have completely melted by Monday.

That would make this the second-fastest disappearance on record this century, behind only June 26, 2022. The typical average melt-out date is mid-August, meaning the glaciers are losing their winter cover nearly two months ahead of schedule.

GLAMOS team leader Matthias Huss attributed the rapid melt to a second bout of record heat within a month, following another heat wave last month. A below-average snowfall last winter compounded the problem: a thinner snow layer — which reflects sunlight more effectively than bare ice — left the underlying ice exposed and unprotected from solar radiation.

Researchers calculated that meltwater is flowing off the glaciers fast enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool every six seconds. Huss said the Rhône Glacier in western Switzerland had lost 1 meter of ice in just 10 days during a recent visit.

According to GLAMOS, the Alps have lost 38 percent of their glacial mass between 2000 and 2024. "If warming continues at the same rate as in recent decades, only a few chunks of ice will remain by 2100," Huss said.

Meanwhile, the heat wave — which began over France and the United Kingdom before pushing into central Europe — has brought Switzerland directly into its path. On Friday, several Swiss locations broke all-time temperature records: Basel hit 38.8 degrees Celsius, Buchs 37.8 degrees, Binau 37.3 degrees and Köppingen 37.0 degrees. The Swiss meteorological service forecast that temperatures would climb close to 40 degrees across most of the country on Saturday, with Basel expected to reach 39 degrees and Geneva 38 degrees.


an@heraldcorp.com