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Climate change appears to be making some of Switzerland’s vaunted glaciers look like Swiss cheese: full of holes.<\/p>\n
Matthias Huss of the glacier monitoring group GLAMOS offered a glimpse of the Rhone Glacier, which feeds the eponymous river that flows through Switzerland and France to the Mediterranean. <\/p>\n
He shared the observation with The Associated Press this month as he trekked up to the icy expanse for a first \u201cmaintenance mission” of the summer to monitor its health.<\/p>\n
The state of Switzerland’s glaciers came into stark and dramatic view of the international community last month when a mudslide from an Alpine mountain submerged the southwestern village of Blatten<\/strong><\/a>. The Birch Glacier on the mountain, which had been holding back a mass of rock near the peak, gave way, sending an avalanche into the valley village below.<\/p>\n Experts say geological shifts and, to a lesser extent, global warming, played a role.<\/p>\n Fortunately, the village had been largely evacuated beforehand, but Swiss authorities said a 64-year-old man had gone missing after the incident. Late Tuesday, regional Valais police said they had found and were examining human remains of a person who died in the mudslide.<\/p>\n The Alps and Switzerland, home to the most glaciers in any European country by far, have seen them retreat for about 170 years, but with ups and downs over time until the 1980s, he said. Since then, the decline has been steady, with 2022 and 2023 the worst of all. Last year was a \u201cbit better,” he said.<\/p>\n “Now, this year also doesn\u2019t look good, so we see we have a clear acceleration trend in the melting of glaciers,\u201d said Huss, who is also a lecturer at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, ETHZ, said in beaming sunshine and with slushy ice dripping underfoot.<\/p>\n Less snow and more heat create punishing conditions<\/p>\n The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said last month was the second-warmest May on record<\/strong><\/a> worldwide, although temperatures in Europe were below the running average for that month compared to the average from 1991 to 2020.<\/p>\n Europe is not alone. In a report on Asia’s climate released Monday, the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation said reduced winter snowfall and extreme summer heat last year \u201cwere punishing for glaciers,\u201d with 23 out of 24 glaciers in the central Himalayas and the Tian Shan range suffering \u201cmass loss\u201d in 2024.<\/p>\n A healthy glacier is considered “dynamic,” by generating new ice as snow falls on it at higher elevations while melting at lower altitudes. The losses in mass at lower levels are compensated by gains above.<\/p>\n As a warming climate pushes up the melting to higher altitudes, such flows will slow down or even stop altogether, and the glacier will essentially become \u201can ice patch that is just lying there,\u201d Huss said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a situation we are seeing more and more often on our glaciers: That the ice is just not dynamic anymore,” he said. “It’s just resting there and melting down in place.\u201d<\/p>\n This lack of dynamic regeneration is the most likely process behind the emergence and persistence of holes, seemingly caused by water turbulence at the bottom of the glacier or air flows through the gaps that appear inside the blocks of ice, Huss said.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst, the holes appear in the middle, and then they grow and grow, and suddenly the roof of these holes is starting to collapse,” he said. “Then these holes get visible from the surface. These holes weren\u2019t known so well a few years ago, but now we are seeing them more often.\u201d<\/p>\n Such an affected glacier, he said, “is a Swiss cheese that is getting more holes everywhere, and these holes are collapsing \u2014 and it\u2019s not good for the glacier.\u201d<\/p>\n Effects felt from fisheries to borders<\/p>\n