I am climbing Switzerland鈥檚 Rh么ne glacier when I feel a thump deep under my feet, then another. The glacier is shifting and cracking as it slides down the mountain, opening new crevasses within. Dazzling blue melt streams grow and multiply across the sooty ice. Every few minutes, melting glacial remnants on the valley wall unleash rocks that crash down with the rumble of cannon fire, raising clouds of dust. Suddenly, the 20 metres of ice under my crampons doesn鈥檛 feel very solid.
A 4-metre aluminium tube has emerged so far from the ice that it has nearly tipped over. at ETH Zurich in Switzerland pulls it out. For two decades, he has been drilling stakes into glaciers to measure how much of the surface melts away during the warm months. But this year caught him off guard.
鈥淚 make sure that they鈥檙e drilled sufficiently that they survive. Except when we have some special conditions like this summer,鈥� he says. 鈥淭here was too much melt.鈥�
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A series of heatwaves have hit Europe this season, including the continent鈥檚 worst-ever heatwave in June. As a result, more than 9 metres of ice have melted off the surface of the Rh么ne glacier. While the stifling weather finally broke in mid-August, forecasters warn temperatures could remain through autumn, and another heatwave .
If that happens, glaciers in the Alps will probably experience record ice loss this year, says Bauder, beating even 2022, when dark Saharan dust blown across the Mediterranean sped up the melt. This would mean another 6 per cent of all glacier ice in the Alps would disappear.
鈥淣o final answer, but we are definitely on the way to break the record, or at least come close to [it],鈥� says at the University of Innsbruck, who has been monitoring glaciers in Austria.
Bauder and his colleagues were taking measurements on the Rh么ne glacier as part of ETH Zurich鈥檚 long-term of more than 100 glaciers. Extreme melt years are occurring more frequently in the Alps, unleashing devastating avalanches of ice and rock and threatening to shrink major rivers. More than 1000 Swiss glaciers 鈥� 40 per cent of the total 鈥� have in the past 50 years. Another 30 glaciers could join them this summer, in what the Swiss media has a 鈥渕assacre鈥�.
The bright face of the mountains is dimming. The world鈥檚 last year-round ski area has temporarily closed due to unsafe conditions on the glacier under the Matterhorn鈥檚 distinctive rock fang, and a famous ice tunnel passing through a glacier in Chamonix has had to be .
The Rh么ne glacier has lost 30 million tonnes of ice this year, enough melt to fill 12,000 Olympic swimming pools. A hole dozens of metres across has torn open the glacier鈥檚 lower flank. At its bottom is a river of silty, grey water dotted with boulders and chunks of ice. As we climb the glacier, we have to circumvent the hole, hopping across a spiderweb of crevasses. Members of the team start setting up a ground-penetrating radar to detect water flows at the bed. Meltwater trickling down through vertical shafts has formed a subglacial river that collapsed the ice here, says at ETH Zurich.
鈥淢ore ice is melting quickly because more water is flowing down there,鈥� she says. 鈥淢ore holes will open on that side of the glacier.鈥�
The Rh么ne glacier features in the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger as a steep cascade of gnarled white ice next to the Belv茅d猫re Hotel. Today, it has almost 2 kilometres back into the valley and the hotel has been abandoned.
A glacier鈥檚 lifeblood is snowfall. In summer, the snow starts melting at lower elevations, exposing the ice underneath to warm air and sunlight. If the melt has only reached midway up the glacier by the next winter, new ice can form above it when fresh snowfall compacts the older snow. The flow of new ice from the top compensates for ice melt below.
But snowfall was scarce in the Alps this winter, and the melt began early due to an unusual May heatwave. Glacier loss day, the point when summer melt in the Swiss Alps exceeds winter snowfall, came on 2 July. 鈥淚t should be in late September,鈥� says Prinz.
Glaciers disappearing
We climb a steep icefall to almost 2600 metres, where we find another melt stake falling over. Bauder pulls it out and drills in a new one. In previous decades, the summer melt rarely reached this point. This year, it has crept above 3100 metres and counting.
While the melt line may not reach the top of the Rh么ne glacier, at 3600 metres, it already has for many lower glaciers. In that case, 鈥渋t鈥檚 just a matter of time,鈥� says at ETH Zurich. 鈥淭hey will disappear.鈥�
Under current climate policies, more than 97 per cent of glaciers in the Alps will be gone by 2100, along with most of those in Scandinavia, Russia, the tropical Andes and western Canada and the US. Only of Rh么ne glacier will be left.
That would deplete many critical water sources. Rh么ne glacier, for instance, is the source of the Rh么ne river. This great waterway flows through Lake Geneva and into France, where 19 major hydroelectric power plants its course. Its waters the reactors at four nuclear plants and up to 5 million tonnes of goods on barges each year.
The Rh么ne also irrigates the Grenache, Viognier and Syrah grapes of famous French wine-making regions like the C么tes du Rh么ne, as well as much of the country鈥檚 fruit production.
Glacier-fed rivers like the Rh么ne, Po, Rhine and Danube have to record lows this summer, woolly mammoth remains and forcing power plants to . That was mostly due to drought and meagre snow melt. But glaciers in the Alps have already 鈥減eak water鈥�, meaning the melt they contribute to rivers in summer is gradually drying up. Europe will have to consider adaptations like building new reservoirs.
鈥淭he situation is really treacherous because, with every day of the heatwave, we鈥檙e using up the reserves of ice, the stocks that have been built up many decades or centuries ago,鈥� says at ETH Zurich. 鈥淭en or 20 years from now鈥� drought will be even more problematic.鈥�
Permafrost, the icy glue that holds the mountains together, is thawing along with the glaciers. This is what increased rockfalls onto the Birch glacier near the Swiss village of Blatten. In May 2025, the glacier fractured, the village under 20 million tonnes of rock and ice, and killing a shepherd. Experts monitoring the glacier evacuated 300 inhabitants nine days before the collapse.
Last month, researchers that laying a fibre-optic cable across a glacier can detect crevasses hidden 25 metres down, a far cheaper way to monitor fracturing than seismometers. They were surprised to discover that 8 per cent of the volume of a glacier in Valais was empty crevasses. 女生小视频s may be underestimating the damage to glaciers鈥� stability, says at ETH Zurich, one of the study鈥檚 authors.
In the past, monitoring was really all about protecting the glaciers, he says. 鈥淲e now need to put more of our focus on monitoring for prevention of disasters.鈥�
As we take a breather on the glacier, I ask Werder if attempts to preserve glaciers with geotextiles or reflective clay granules could work. He says the outcomes of these geoengineering approaches are highly uncertain.
While ski resorts have covered parts of eight other glaciers with geotextiles, spreading them across Switzerland鈥檚 large glaciers would 拢1.3 billion a year and only slow ice loss, not stop it. But if humanity could limit global warming to 2掳C, the number of glaciers surviving to 2100 would almost , including 269 in the Alps.
鈥淎ll other solutions are pretty desperate,鈥� says Werder. 鈥淲e really should just reduce CO2 fast.鈥�
