Switzerland’s GLAMOS Glacier Monitoring Program Measures Massive 2026 Ice Loss

Switzerland’s glaciers have accelerated their retreat in the most recent data from September 21, 2026, according to the latest figures from the Glacier Monitoring Switzerland network, or GLAMOS. It appears that only 2022 was a worse year for ice loss. However, 2026 could surpass it, as the melting season is far from over. A late-season heat wave has continued to grip Western Europe since the figures were released and remains in place at the time of writing (September 30).

While low winter snow drives these annual losses in part, it’s summer heat that drives melt significantly below the mean line. This winter was slightly below average in precipitable water, but the glaciers hit “melt day” around June 29 (where the red line crosses 0 on the chart above), largely due to the month-long heat wave that preceded it. That’s three months earlier than scheduled in a stable glacier environment.

• Related: American Tourist Dies After Falling Into Crevasse Above Zermatt, Switzerland

To show the ice loss from another perspective, glaciologist Mattias Huss recently posted photos from the Aletsch Glacier, Switzerland’s largest, showing a full 6 meters (20 feet) of loss from the start of the summer. He stated that the loss was “hard to grasp, even for glaciologists.”

A Grim Picture

Because the melt season continues and full calculations haven’t been released, we don’t yet know this year’s loss in percentage terms. However, losses are likely to rival, if not surpass, the previous melt record year of 2022, seeing as this was the hottest summer ever recorded in Western Europe. 

GLAMOS estimates that Switzerland’s glaciers have lost 24% of their ice volume over the decade from 2015 to 2025. That is far faster than losses in recent decades: about 10% disappeared between 1990 and 2000, 14% between 2000 and 2010, and 17% between 2010 and 2020. At the end of 2025, Switzerland retained 45.1 cubic kilometers of glacier ice, 30 cubic kilometers less than in 2000. Swiss glacier area had also declined to about 755 square kilometers, roughly 30% below its 2000 extent.

• Related: The Swiss Alps Have Lost 38% of Their Ice Since 2000

What is GLAMOS?

GLAMOS — Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland — was established to systematically document changes in the country’s glaciers. Today, it’s one of the world’s longest-running glacier observation networks. In fact, scientists have measured some select glaciers for more than a century. Currently, GLAMOS monitors hundreds of glaciers, documenting changes in glacier length, mass balance, area, and volume, and providing long-term records of how Swiss glaciers respond to climate change. 

Why Swiss Glaciers Matter

Glaciers are stunningly beautiful and have long been tourist spectacles, especially in the European Alps. Their imminent disappearance will be a blow to Switzerland’s famous scenery, tourist industry, and ski centers. But glaciers are more important than just vehicles for enjoyment. Their disappearance will affect all citizens, not just the Swiss and their wealthy tourist clientele. During hot, dry summers, when rainfall is limited and demand for water is high, glacier melt can sustain rivers and reservoirs. Glaciers also help stabilize the mountains; their retreat can leave behind unstable rock.

That water-supply role is not a minor side effect. A 2018 study in Nature Climate Change by glaciologists Matthias Huss and Regine Hock (the same Huss who is documenting the glacier loss), modeled runoff from 56 of the world’s major glacierized river basins out to the year 2100. They found that roughly half those basins have already passed “peak water,” the point at which glacier meltwater contributions to rivers begin declining rather than growing, even as the glaciers that feed them keep shrinking. Once a glacier is small enough, there’s simply less ice left to melt each summer, and the steady supplemental flow it used to provide during dry spells starts drying up for good.

That matters most in the exact scenario Switzerland just lived through: a hot, low-snow year where rainfall alone can’t cover demand. Alpine glaciers are comparatively small on a global scale, but they’re a critical late-summer buffer for rivers like the Rhine and the Rhône, both of which originate in Swiss glacial basins and supply water, hydropower, and agriculture to millions of people well beyond Switzerland’s borders. As that buffer shrinks, dry-summer water security becomes less a seasonal inconvenience and more a structural problem. Switzerland produces around 60% of its electricity through hydropower.

When a climate no longer supports glaciers even at the highest elevations of the Alps, you will have extreme heat in the valleys, where we have built our societies. That heat will slowly chip away at our economic growth, infrastructure, health, and collective psyche. Melting Alpine glaciers are only a small part of what awaits humankind in such a drastic climate shift.