Swiss scientists hope to save biggest glacier in the Alps even as ice loss accelerates

Record ID: 1984988

  • Title: Swiss scientists hope to save biggest glacier in the Alps even as ice loss accelerates
  • Date: 21st March 2025
  • Summary: JUNGFRAUJOCH, SWITZERLAND (MARCH 21, 2025) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) DIRECTOR OF GLACIER MONITORING SWITZERLAND (GLAMOS), MATTHIAS HUSS, SAYING: “There is actually no good way to save glaciers without reducing CO2 emissions. There are some technologies that can be used to reduce the ice melting very locally, but these technologies are not applicable at a large scale
  • Embargoed:
  • Keywords: Switzerland climate change glaciers glaciologists global warming
  • Location: JUNGFRAUJOCH, EVOLENE AND OBERGOMS, SWITZERLAND
  • City: JUNGFRAUJOCH, EVOLENE AND OBERGOMS, SWITZERLAND
  • Country: Switzerland
  • Topics: Environment,Europe,Temperature
  • Reuters ID: LVA005075421032025RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: The biggest glacier in the Alps could yet be partially saved if global warming is capped below two degrees Celsius, Swiss scientists said on Friday (March 21), although significant ice loss is now inevitable.
    Glaciers around the globe are disappearing faster than ever, with the last three-year period seeing the largest glacial mass loss on record, according to a UN report on Friday.
    The Great Aletsch Glacier in the Bernese Alps, which is 20 kilometres long and weighs 10 billion tons, attracts over a million people a year who can view its immensity from the Jungfraujoch viewing platform at 3,454 metres above sea level.
    "It's very likely that almost all glaciers are going to be lost and I sincerely hope that the Aletsch Glacier at this high elevation, we may be able to preserve some of the ice," Matthias Huss, Director of Glacier Monitoring Switzerland (GLAMOS), told Reuters at the top of the Jungfraujoch railway station.
    In a scenario without any climate mitigation, its three distinct tributaries that merge into a vast river of ice would vanish, leaving behind a deep, grey valley, a depiction from the Swiss Academy of Sciences showed.
    But if global warming holds below two degrees, it would survive, albeit much shorter and thinner and "considerably reduce the menacing rise in the sea level," the document said.
    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. Already, their volume has fallen by almost 40 percent since 2000, University of Fribourg glaciologist Martina Barandun said.
    “Of this 40 percent, 10 percent have been lost just in two years, so in 2022 and 2023. If we now imagine that these are not going to be such extreme years any more, but if this is going to be the new normal, we will accelerate the glacier volume change or retreat enormously,” she added.
    (Production: Cecile Mantovani)
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