Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on September 22, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleSwitzerland's Gries Glacier is melting rapidly due to climate change, with significant ice loss and potential future impacts.
By Cecile Mantovani and Denis Balibouse
OBERGOMS, Switzerland (Reuters) -Switzerland's 5.4 km-long Gries Glacier, a focal point for research, is retreating at an alarming pace as climate change accelerates an unprecedented ice melt across the country, the Swiss glacier monitoring service said.
"This is a dying glacier," said Matthias Huss, Director of Glacier Monitoring Switzerland (GLAMOS), noting the depth of the ice reduced by six metres in the 12 months to September 2025 alone.
Between 2000 and 2023, the glacier, in the southern canton of Valais, reduced by 800 metres in length. Today it is 3.2 km shorter than in 1880, with an average ice thickness of 57 metres.
The grim reality of rapid glacier melt was seen in May 2025, when a catastrophic glacier collapse destroyed the village of Blatten, also in the canton of Valais.
Huss blamed the melting of Gries Glacier on the consecutive dry years of 2022 and 2023, and a warm 2025 summer, despite momentary relief coming from heavy snowfall in mid-April 2025.
"We would need much more snow to counteract the effect of the very warm summers. And this summer of 2025, again, was much too warm," Huss stated.
At its lower points, the glacier could melt within five years, he said, whereas at altitudes of around 3,000 metres, it will take some 40-50 years for it to disappear.
About one hundred glaciers have vanished between 2016 and 2022 in Switzerland, according to GLAMOS.
Since the 1990s, ice loss has increased in nearly all regions around the world mainly due to stronger summer melting, according to a new report by the World Meteorological Organisation. It found, for the third year in a row, every glaciated region on Earth reported ice loss.
(Writing by Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva, Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
Climate change refers to long-term alterations in temperature, precipitation, wind patterns, and other elements of the Earth's climate system, primarily driven by human activities such as burning fossil fuels.
A glacier is a large mass of ice that forms from compacted snow and moves slowly over land, often found in polar regions and high mountains.
Ice melt refers to the process of ice converting to water, often accelerated by rising temperatures, which can contribute to rising sea levels and affect ecosystems.
Consequences of glacier melt include rising sea levels, loss of freshwater resources, changes in ecosystems, and increased natural hazards such as landslides and flooding.
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