Swiss Glaciers Suffer Their Second-Worst Year on Record
The Alps lost 5.5 percent of their remaining ice this year, and scientists say the long-term outlook is settled.
Switzerland's glaciers lost 5.5 percent of their ice volume in 2026. It is the second-largest annual loss on record, behind only 2022, according to figures from the national monitoring network GLAMOS and the Swiss Academy of Sciences, reported by the Associated Press.
Heat waves and thin winter snowfall drove the melt. Between July and September alone, the glaciers lost about 2.2 trillion liters of water, roughly four times what Switzerland uses in a year. On average the ice thinned by 2.5 to 4 meters, and some glacier tongues lost as much as 10 meters. The Aletsch, the largest glacier in the Alps, and the Rhone glacier both recorded their biggest melt on record. Over the past five years, Swiss ice volume has fallen by nearly a fifth.
The monitoring bodies said that under these conditions, Alpine glaciers have no chance of surviving in the long term. Matthias Huss, a glaciologist at ETH Zurich, told the AP that it is "almost too late" for the Swiss glaciers. He added that cutting emissions still matters for the polar ice sheets.
Why it reaches beyond the mountains
- Power: Switzerland gets more than half its electricity from hydropower, which depends on meltwater.
- Rivers: Swiss glaciers feed the Rhine, the Rhone, the Po and the Danube, which carry freight and supply farms and cities across the continent.
- Landscape: Europe is the fastest-warming continent, and the Alpine scenery that draws summer walkers and winter skiers is changing within a single generation.
For anyone with a chalet in the Valais or a long habit of summer hiking, the figures put a number on what is already visible from the trail.
Sources: Associated Press, GLAMOS, Swiss Academy of Sciences.
