The country has lost as much ice in the last two years as it did in the three decades before 1990, researchers said, describing the ice melt as "catastrophic".
Switzerland has lost 10% of its glaciers in just two years, research shows, after high summer heat and low winter snowfall.
The team at Glacier Monitoring Switzerland (GLAMOS) said the “massive ice loss” stemmed from a winter with very low volumes of snow - which falls on top of glaciers and protects them from exposure to direct sunlight - and high summer temperatures.
Images posted on social media by Matthias Huss, who leads GLAMOS, during data collection trips in recent weeks showed new lakes forming next to glacier tongues, as well as streams of melt water running through ice caves, and bare rock poking out from thinning ice.
More than half of the glaciers in the Alps are in Switzerland where temperatures are rising by around twice the global average due to climate change.
Read more:Antarctic winter sea ice hits ‘extreme’ record lowClimate models warn of apocalyptic future
But even in such areas, “a loss of over two metres of the average ice thickness is extremely high,” the team said.
The original article contains 459 words, the summary contains 170 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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Switzerland has lost 10% of its glaciers in just two years, research shows, after high summer heat and low winter snowfall.
The team at Glacier Monitoring Switzerland (GLAMOS) said the “massive ice loss” stemmed from a winter with very low volumes of snow - which falls on top of glaciers and protects them from exposure to direct sunlight - and high summer temperatures.
Images posted on social media by Matthias Huss, who leads GLAMOS, during data collection trips in recent weeks showed new lakes forming next to glacier tongues, as well as streams of melt water running through ice caves, and bare rock poking out from thinning ice.
More than half of the glaciers in the Alps are in Switzerland where temperatures are rising by around twice the global average due to climate change.
Read more:Antarctic winter sea ice hits ‘extreme’ record lowClimate models warn of apocalyptic future
But even in such areas, “a loss of over two metres of the average ice thickness is extremely high,” the team said.
The original article contains 459 words, the summary contains 170 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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