The images before and after show that the glaciers disappear before our eyes

When Matthias Huss visited the Rhône glacier for the first time in Switzerland 35 years ago, the ice was just a few steps from the place where his parents were racing the car.

“When I went on the ice for the first time … There was (there was) a special feeling of eternity,” said Matthias.

Today, it is half an hour in the same parking space and the scene is very different.

“Whenever I come back, I remember what it was,” recalls Matthias, who is now director of glacier surveillance in Switzerland (glamos), “what the glacier looked like when I was a child.”

There are similar stories for many glaciers on the whole planet, because these frozen icing rivers are withdrawn – quickly.

In 2024, glaciers outside the giant glacial caps of Greenland and Antarctica lost 450 billion tonnes of ice, according to a recent report from the world meteorological organization.

This is equivalent to a 7 km ice block (4.3 miles) in height, 7 km wide and 7 km deep – enough water to fill 180 million Olympic swimming pools.

“The glaciers founded all over the world,” said Professor Ben Marzeion of the University of Bremen’s University Institute. “They are sitting in a climate that is very hostile to them now because of global warming.”

The glaciers in Switzerland have been particularly seriously affected, losing a quarter of their ice in the past 10 years, have revealed Glamos measures this week.

“It is really difficult to grasp the extent of this merger,” said Dr. Huss.

But the photos – of space and the floor – tell their own story.

Satellite images show how the Rhône glacier has changed since 1990, when Dr. Huss visited for the first time. At the front of the glacier is a lake where there was ice.

Until recently, Alps glaciologists considered 2% of the ice lost in a single year to be “extreme”.

Then 2022 blew up this idea out of the water, with almost 6% of Switzerland’s remaining ice in a single year.

This was followed by significant losses in 2023, 2024 and now 2025 too.

Regine Hock, professor of glaciology at the University of Oslo, has visited the Alps since the 1970s.

The changes during her life are “really superb”, she says, but “what we see now are really massive changes in a few years”.

The Clariden glacier, in northeast of Switzerland, was roughly in balance until the end of the 20th century – winning as much ice through the snowfall that she lost to fusion.

But this century, it melted quickly.

For many smaller glaciers, such as the Pizol glacier in the northeast Swiss Alps, it was too much.

“This is one of the glaciers I have observed, and now it’s completely gone,” said Dr. Huss. “It definitely makes me sad.”

The photographs allow us to look even further in time.

The Gries glacier, in southern Switzerland near the Italian border, fell by around 2.2 km (1.4 thousand) during the last century. Where was the end of the glacier is now a large ice lake.

In the south-eastern Switzerland, the Pers Glacier has once fed the largest more Moreatsch glacier, which flows towards the valley. Now the two are no longer meeting.

And the largest Alpes glacier, the Grand Aletsch, fell by around 2.3 km (1.4 thousand) in the past 75 years. Where there were ice, there are now trees.

The glaciers have developed and have narrowed naturally for millions of years, of course.

In the cold shots of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries – part of the small ice age – regularly advanced glaciers.

Meanwhile, many were considered cursed by the devil in alpine folklore, their advances linked to spiritual forces while threatening hamlets and agricultural land.

There are even stories of villagers calling on the priests to speak to the spirits of the glaciers and to raise the mountain.

The glaciers began their widespread retirement through the Alps around 1850, although timing varied from one place to another.

This coincided with the increase in industrialization, when burning fossil fuels, in particular coal, began to heat our atmosphere, but it is difficult to unravel the natural and human causes as far in time.

When there is no real doubt, it is that the particularly rapid losses of the last 40 years are not natural.

Without humans who warm the planet – burning fossil fuels and freeing huge quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2) – glaciers should be roughly stable.

“We can only explain it if we take CO2 emissions into account,” confirms Professor Marzeion.

What is even more to think is that these large fluid ice bodies can take decades to adapt completely to the climate of rapid warming. This means that even if global temperatures have stabilized tomorrow, the glaciers would continue to withdraw.

“A large part of the future glacier melting is already locked up,” said Professor Marzeion. “They are late on climate change.”

But everything is not lost.

Half of the ice remaining through the mountain glaciers in the world could be preserved if global warming is limited to 1.5 ° C above the “pre-industrial” levels of the late 1800s, according to research published this year in the journal Science.

Our current trajectory leads us towards a warming of approximately 2.7 ° C above the pre -industrial levels by the end of this century – which would finally see three quarters of ice.

This additional water entering the rivers and finally the oceans means a higher sea level for coastal populations around the world.

But the loss of ice will be particularly felt by mountain communities according to freshwater glaciers.

The glaciers are a bit like giant tanks. They collect water like snowfall – which turn into ice – during cold and humid periods and release it into cast iron water during hot periods.

This melting water helps stabilize the river flows during hot and dry summers – until the glacier disappears.

The loss of this water resource has drive effects for all those relying on glaciers – for irrigation, alcohol consumption, hydroelectricity and even shipping traffic.

Switzerland is not immune to these challenges, but the implications are much deeper for the high mountains of Asia, called by some as the third pole due to the volume of ice.

About 800 million people count at least in part on the glaciers’ melting water, especially for agriculture. This includes the upper river basin, which serves parts of China, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In regions with drier summers, ice melting water and snow can be the only important source of water for months.

“This is where we see the greatest vulnerability,” said Professor Hock.

So how do scientists feel confronted with the future perspectives of glaciers in a warming world?

“It’s sad,” said Professor Hock. “But at the same time, it is also stimulating. If you decarbonize and reduce the imprint (carbon), you can preserve the glaciers.

“We have it in our hands.”

Image of the top: Tschierva glacier, Swiss Alps, in 1935 and 2022. Credit: Swisstopo and Glaciology, ETH Zurich.

Additional report by Dominic Bailey and Erwan Rivault.