Swiss glaciers have shrunk by a quarter since 2015, study says

Summary

Two tourists facing the Rhone Glacier melting into its glacial lake, on September 12, 2025 above Gletsch, in the Swiss Alps. Switzerland's glaciers, which are disproportionately impacted by climate change, have lost a quarter of their volume in the past decade alone, a study warned Wednesday, heightening concerns over accelerating melting. In 2025, glacial melting in the Alpine nation was once again "enormous", the Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland (GLAMOS) network said, adding that it was close to the record set in 2022. A winter with little snow combined with summer heatwaves in June and August saw Switzerland's glaciers lose three percent of their volume. That marks the fourth-largest level of shrinkage since measurements began, trailing only 2022, 2023 and 2003, according to GLAMOS's annual report. Glaciers across the Alps have been retreating for more than a century. But in recent decades, the process has sped up as the climate warms, driven by humanity's burning of fossil fuels. "Since about 20 years, all glaciers in Switzerland are losing ice, and the rate of this loss is accelerating," GLAMOS chief Matthias Huss told AFP. Between 2015 and 2025 alone, the glaciers shed 24 percent of their volume, Wednesday's report said, compared to 10 percent between 1990 and 2000. Melting away GLAMOS researchers did extensive measurements at around 20 reference glaciers in September, and extrapolated the findings to Switzerland's 1,400 glaciers. Europe's Alpine region has been hard-hit by climate change, with warming in Switzerland progressing at twice the pace of the global average, according to the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology. Since the early 1970s, more than 1,100 Swiss glaciers have disappeared completely, according to GLAMOS. © Fabrice Coffrini, AFP Other Alpine countries are also seeing glaciers retreat, and researchers highlight that those in Switzerland -- whose mountain peaks are higher than in neighbouring Austria -- may have a better chanc...