Three percent of the ice in Switzerland’s glaciers has melted in the last twelve months. This is the fourth time in Switzerland’s history that there has been a lot of ice melt in a year. This data was released by Glacier Monitoring Switzerland on October 1, 2025. This data is from the hydrological year i.e. from October 2024 to September 2025. Seeing this data, the Swiss government has become very alert.
There has been much less snow than expected in the winter of 2024-25, especially in the northeastern Swiss mountains. Switzerland has received 13 percent less snow this year. The reason behind this is the heatwave in June and August. This year, June was the second warmest in Switzerland since 2003. Jungfraujoch, located at 3580 meters, was the warmest ever.
This was due to the melting of glacier ice. This melting ice caused about 1.6 meters of water to flow onto the ground. For the last decade, Switzerland has been melting continuously and this year it has melted by three percent.
According to Matthias Hass, director of Glacier Monitoring Switzerland, this year has been very warm. In 2022, 5.9 percent of the ice melted and in 2023, 4.4 percent of the ice melted. However, this year has been very dangerous compared to the 2010-2020 average. The amount of ice that has melted this year has been very worrying. The decade of 2015-2025: Switzerland’s glaciers have been very bad. This decade has seen a decline of about 24 percent in ice. Between 2010 and 2020, this ice decreased by 17 percent. Between 2000 and 2010, there was a decrease of 14 percent in ice. Today, only 45.1 cubic kilometers of ice remain. This is 30 cubic kilometers less than in 2000. The area of the glacier has decreased by 755 square kilometers. This is a decrease of 30 percent.
The Silvretta Glacier in northeastern Switzerland has seen the least snowfall in the last 100 years. It has fallen by 25 to 50 percent less than average. The most snow melt has been seen on glaciers below 3000 meters. The Aletschgletscher glacier, located at 1980 meters, has seen the most snow melt. Up to 12 meters of snow has melted here. The Valais glacier in the south had 2 meters more snow than usual in April 2025. This has somewhat compensated for the loss of snow. The high-altitude glaciers in the Mater and Saas Valleys have also seen more snow melt than average. The weather in July was cold and there was some relief as snow fell. However, the amount of snow that melted was not as much.
