Swiss Glaciers Lose 19.4% of Ice Volume Since 2021 as Some Collapse From Within
Swiss glaciers lost 5.5 percent of their ice volume in the first eight months of 2026, bringing total losses since 2021 to 19.4 percent, according to a report. Researchers say some glaciers are collapsing internally as meltwater carves cavities.
The report, a collaboration between the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network and the Swiss Commission for Cryosphere Observation, found that the mean thickness of individual glaciers fell by between 2.5 meters and 4 meters in 2026. Matthias Huss, a glaciologist at ETH Zurich and lead author of the report, said many people do not realize how fast glaciers are retreating, or that just one generation ago some now-barren sites used to sit beneath hundreds of meters of ice.
The scientists have not yet compiled a formal tally of lost glaciers this year but said they had witnessed the death of a number of small ones. 'I visited one last week and it's so impressive to stand in this moonlike landscape where there was a big layer of ice -- an extensive glacier -- just a few years ago,' Huss said. 'And now it's a rock desert where there's some scattered blocks of old ice still lying around and melting on the hot rocks.'
Huss said scientists were increasingly seeing glaciers collapse from the inside, the result of internal streams beneath the ice that excavate caverns, rather than simply retreating from surface heat.
Analysis published by MeteoSwiss on Tuesday found the summer half-year from April to September was the hottest and driest it had been since records began in 1864. The Guardian reports that in that time humanity has filled the atmosphere with 1.8 trillion tons of carbon dioxide and heated the planet by about 1.4 degrees Celsius.