New Swiss glacier assessment expected after hottest summer on record

An annual report on the state of Switzerland's glaciers due to be released Thursday is expected to reveal drastic loss after the country weathered its hottest summer on record.

The Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland (GLAMOS) network, which publishes the report each autumn, already cautioned back in June that the country's glaciers were facing drastic loss.

In fact, GLAMOS chief Matthias Huss told AFP at the time that all snow and ice accumulated by Swiss glaciers over the winter had already melted away -- marking the alarming second-earliest arrival on record of the tipping point known as glacier loss day, after 2022.

"We're just seeing enormous ablation, ice melt rates and snow melt rates all over the Alps," he said. GLAMOS network chief Matthias Huss told AFP at the time.

Since then, the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSuisse) has determined that the months of June, July and August were each the hottest ever recorded in the country since measurements began in 1864.

In last year's report, GLAMOS had noted that Switzerland's glaciers had lost three percent of their volume in 2025 -- the fourth-largest level of shrinkage on record, trailing only 2022, 2023 and 2003.

Between 2015 and 2025 alone, the glaciers shed 24 percent of their volume, last year's report found, compared to 10 percent between 1990 and 2000.

Since the early 1970s, more than 1,100 Swiss glaciers have disappeared completely, according to GLAMOS.

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 MeteoSuisse.

Scientists have warned that Switzerland's glaciers could all but disappear by the end of this century without more action to rein in global warming.