Cheese-like holes in Swiss glaciers

• Climate change is causing Switzerland’s glaciers to resemble Swiss cheese, filled with holes.

• Matthew Huss of GLAMOS observed Rhone Glacier, which feeds the river that flows through Switzerland and France to the Mediterranean.

• The glaciers have seen retreat for about 170 years, with steady declines until the 1980s.

• The trend of melting glaciers is accelerating, with 2022 and 2023 being the worst.

• A healthy glacier generates new ice at higher elevations while melting at lower altitudes.

• As a warming climate pushes up melting to higher altitudes, glaciers will become “an ice patch that is just lying there.”

• The lack of dynamic regeneration is the most likely process behind the emergence and persistence of holes.

• Glacier shrinkage has consequences for agriculture, fisheries, drinking water levels, and border tensions.

• Wide-scale glacier melt could jeopardize Switzerland’s electricity, which is largely derived from hydroelectric plants driven from its lakes and rivers.