Alert: Swiss glaciers have never melted so fast

Swiss glaciers continue to melt and in 2022 they swept all records under the dual effect of a dry winter and an intense summer heat wave. Climate change is visible to all.

Three cubic kilometers of ice were lost, i.e. 6% of the total volume of the Swiss glaciers.

A loss of 2% in a year was until now considered “extreme”, notes the Expert Committee of the Cryosphere Measurement Network of the Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences. And the situation will get worse.

“It is not possible to slow down the melting in the short term,” explains Dr. Matthias Hus, subject authority and director of the Swiss Glaciological Data Network (Glamos).

If we reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and protect the climate, “this could save at best about 1/3 of the total volumes in Switzerland”. Without it the glaciers will have almost disappeared in Switzerland “by the end of the century”, according to him.

A foretold tragedy

In the spring, the thickness of the snow in the Alps has never been so thin, and dust from the sands of the Sahara came to stain the snow. Consequently this absorbed more heat, melted faster and deprived the glaciers of their protective snow cover already at the beginning of summer.

The ice then suffered the heat wave without its usual protective shield.

At the end of summer, a tongue of land at the junction of the Chanfleron and Scex Rouge glaciers at a height of just over 2,800 meters made its appearance and was airborne for the first time since Roman times.

And in early July, the collapse of a huge chunk of the Marmolanda glacier, on the highest peak of the Italian Alps, claimed the lives of eleven people and demonstrated the gravity of the situation.

According to the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (GIEC), which was released this spring, the melting of ice and snow is one of the ten major threats due to the increase in the temperature of the climate.

First the little ones

“The damage was catastrophic for the small glaciers,” the Swiss experts underline.

The Pitzol glacier in eastern Switzerland – whose funeral was already held in 2019 – has now “virtually disappeared”, as has Vadret dal Corvatsch in south-eastern Switzerland or even Schwarzbachfirn in the south. The situation had worsened to the point where the measurements have stopped.

At an altitude of 3,000 meters, in the Engadine region of southeastern Switzerland and the southern part of Valais, “a layer of snow 4 to 6 meters thick has disappeared, in some cases twice the maximum” recorded so far.

“Even at the highest measurement points, such as the Jungfraujoch (note: reaches a height of almost 3,500 meters), we were able to measure significant losses,” insists the team of experts.

The phenomenon will accelerate, the report points out: “Observations show that numerous ice tongues are shrinking and that rock islands appear in the middle of the glacier when the ice is not very thick. These are processes that accelerate the degradation even more.”

“These developments also highlight the importance of glaciers during warm and dry years for water and energy supply,” the experts explain.

This is something that is of critical importance for a country where hydropower plants provide over 60% of the country’s total energy production.

“If in fifty years we were to see the same meteorological conditions (…) the impact would be much more significant because in fifty years we expect the glaciers to have practically disappeared and consequently will not be able to provide water”, underlines Matias Huss.

Macabre and archaeological discoveries

The melting of the glaciers also has less expected consequences.

More and more often the walkers make some grisly discovery as corpses are released from the ice, in which they have been imprisoned sometimes for decades, even centuries.

This can also prove to be a godsend for archaeologists, who suddenly have access to artifacts that are thousands of years old.

Even more improbable is the fact that the melting of a glacier between Italy and Switzerland moved the border that runs along the watershed at this point, triggering lengthy diplomatic negotiations.

RES-EMP

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