Switzerland reaches critical glacier limit weeks ahead of schedule

Snow and ice accumulated in the Swiss Alps over the winter have now melted, a monitoring service said on Friday (4), signaling the early arrival of the critical annual threshold at which glaciers shrink.

From now on, any further melting until October will reduce them, according to the Swiss glacier monitoring service (Glamos).

“Glacier Loss Day has been reached in Switzerland,” Glamos boss Matthias Huss wrote on X, noting that it snowed less and June was the second warmest on record.

The critical threshold is usually reached in August and its early arrival is a further blow to Switzerland's 1,400 glaciers, which have been shrinking at an alarming rate.

Huss called this “a new cry for help.”

“It’s as if the glaciers are saying, ‘We’re disappearing, help us.’ For a glacier in good condition, that day should come by the end of September, October or never,” he said.

Only in the “record” year of 2022 was this critical threshold reached earlier, occurring on June 26.

According to the head of the service, experts considered 2022 to be an exceptional year and, although they knew that this event would repeat itself due to climate change, they did not expect it to happen so soon.

“We expect significant ice losses due to the extended melt season,” he concluded.

Glaciers in the Swiss Alps began to retreat about 170 years ago. Initially the decline was modest, but in recent decades the rate of melting has accelerated considerably.

The consequences of this phenomenon are drastic, as these ice giants are important climate regulators and play a crucial role in the world's freshwater supply.

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