Swiss glaciers have been melting at an alarming rate due to global warming for decades, and the most recent heatwave is accelerating this process.
The most current heatwave is impacting not only humans, animals and Switzerland’s infrastructure, but is also inflicting further damage on the country’s glaciers.
“Prolonged heatwaves are the worst-case scenario for glaciers,” according to Matthias Huss, head of the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network (GLAMOS) .
While one or two days of intense heat don’t cause significant melting, when the heat persists for more than two weeks, as it has so far in June – “the melting is massive, even in the highest peak regions,” he said.
Just how ‘massive’?
“Our data shows that right now, about 400 cubic metres of water per second are flowing from the glaciers,” Huss pointed out. “That’s equivalent to filling an Olympic-sized swimming pool every six seconds, day and night, for at least these two weeks of heatwave.”
This amount of damage is “quite exceptional,” Huus pointed out.
GLAMOS measurements indicate that such intense and especially prolonged melting has never occurred at this time of year, although some years, such as 2019, 2022 and 2025, came close.
Disproportionately impacted
While glaciers are melting all over the world due to climate change, Swiss ones are affected more than others: since the early 1970s, more than 1,100 of Switzerland’s glaciers have disappeared completely, GLAMOS found.
That’s because, according to data from the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, warming in Switzerland is progressing at twice the pace of the global average,
A report by the Swiss Academy of Science published in March 2026 confirms that Switzerland is warming faster than many other parts of the world.
The report, authored by 60 climate experts, noted that from the start of record-keeping in 1864, the average temperature in Switzerland rose by 1.8C – more than double the global average.
The reason is that Switzerland is landlocked so it doesn’t benefit from the buffering effect of the oceans, which are able to absorb large amounts of heat.
Additionally, the altitude and morphology of the Alps also play and important role in accelerating global warming.
Snow and ice are melting faster and faster, reducing the land’s ability to reflect sunlight back to space (called the “albedo effect”).
READ MORE: Why is Switzerland warming faster than most countries in the world?
