Swiss Glaciers Reveal Unique Cheese-Like Holes

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    Rhone Glacier, Switzerland — With noticeable impacts of climate change, Switzerland’s glaciers, once praised for their majesty, are increasingly resembling Swiss cheese, riddled with holes.

    Matthias Huss, a member of the GLAMOS glacier monitoring group, shared insights from the Rhone Glacier, the source of the river that meanders through Switzerland and France before reaching the Mediterranean. During his latest monitoring trip to the glacier, Huss highlighted the pressing challenges glaciers face amid rising temperatures.

    The international community’s concern for Switzerland’s glaciers was recently heightened. Last month, a mudslide from an Alpine mountain overwhelmed the southwestern village of Blatten. The Birch Glacier, which helped secure a mass of rock near the mountain top, failed, unleashing an avalanche into the valley below. Fortunately, most of the village was evacuated in advance; however, authorities announced a 64-year-old man remained unaccounted for. Shortly after, local police in Valais discovered and began examining human remains believed to be linked to the incident.

    Switzerland, boasting the highest number of glaciers in Europe, had been witnessing glacial retreat for around 170 years, marred by periods of equal growth and decline. However, since the 1980s, the decline in glaciers has been consistent, with 2022 and 2023 marked as particularly dire years. Huss, also a lecturer at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, observed a stark acceleration in glacier melting against a backdrop of sunny skies and retreating ice.

    The situation is exacerbated by low snowfall levels and rising temperatures. The European Union’s Copernicus climate monitor indicated that May was the second-hottest on record globally, albeit cooler than average in Europe compared to norms from 1991 to 2020. On a bigger scale, a report from the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization emphasized reduced snowfall and heightened summer heat severely impacting glaciers in Asia, with significant mass loss reported across numerous glaciers in the Himalayas and the Tian Shan range.

    Healthy glaciers are characterized by their dynamism, creating new ice when snow blankets higher altitudes while melting occurs in lower regions. The ice loss at lower levels used to be balanced by gains at the top. However, with warming trends pushing melting higher, Huss warns this flow might cease, turning the glacier into a static ice patch. Nowadays, the ice appears stagnant and is simply melting in place, leading to the formation and expansion of cavities. These cavities, once limited to internal crevices, now visibly affect the glacier surface.

    The “Swiss cheese” phenomenon highlights the danger glaciers face. Once a cavity’s roof collapses, the holes become apparent, testament to the glacier’s distress. “These holes weren’t known very much a few years ago, but now we see them more frequently,” explained Huss. “An affected glacier resembles Swiss cheese, increasingly pocked with collapsing holes, unfavorable for its health.”

    Glacier shrinkage was associated with broader impacts in agriculture, fisheries, water resources, and geopolitical confrontations around shared water bodies, stated Richard Alley, a geosciences professor at Penn State University. Alley highlighted the long-term consequences: “Currently, dwindling glaciers are crucial for summertime flows that are above average, but this will change to below-average flows as they vanish.”

    For Switzerland, glacier erosion threatens electricity generation since much of its energy relies on hydroelectric plants catapulted by its rivers and lakes. Extensive glacier melting could challenge this.

    During a mission to measure ice depth, Huss demonstrated with an ice drill, and set up a rod as a simple yet time-tested technique for assessing glacier melt. Through a network of drilled stakes, changes in glacier mass are tracked yearly. He remarked that a stake initially drilled in September was now 2.5 meters above ground, substantiating ice shrinkage over time. In the exceptionally warm 2022 year, glaciers lost nearly ten meters of vertical ice.

    Many glaciers are facing a fate of disappearance.

    The globe is nearing the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit set in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Yet, the focus on climate issues has been somewhat displaced by trade conflicts and geopolitical instability, such as ongoing issues in Ukraine and the Middle East.

    “If global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees, we couldn’t hope for the glacier’s preservation,” Huss reflected, noting the unfortunate reality that many Swiss glaciers might vanish. Emotionally, it’s crushing for him. Scientifically, he is riveted by experiencing such rapid transformations firsthand.

    “The disappearance of glaciers I’ve monitored for 20 years is particularly distressing,” he shared. “Witnessing them replaced by barren rocks is disheartening.” Yet, he acknowledged, from a scientific perspective, it is indeed an extraordinary period to observe these swift shifts.