Swiss glaciers start the melting season
Published: Tuesday, Jun 4th 2024, 10:50
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The glacier melt in the Swiss Alps has begun. As glaciologist Matthias Huss wrote on Platform X on Tuesday, the peak of snow accumulation was most likely reached on Monday.
"From now on, melting will dominate," Huss continues. This year's weather has been a blessing for the Swiss glaciers so far.
According to the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network (Glamos), at the end of April there was around 31 percent more snow on all of Switzerland's 1,400 glaciers than the average for the years 2010 to 2020. Since these measurements were taken, the condition of the glaciers has improved even further, wrote Huss.
This suggests that the glacier melt in 2024 is likely to be lower than in the two previous years. In the last two years, Swiss glaciers have lost a total of ten percent of their ice. Following the record loss of six percent in 2022, glacier ice melted by a further four percent in 2023.
©Keystone/SDA
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