Switzerland's glaciers shed more than 5.5 percent of their ice this year, according to the country's monitoring body, after a winter drought gave way to relentless summer heat waves. It is one of the largest single-year losses on record.
A dry winter, then relentless heat
Snow that normally protects glacier ice through the summer never built up. Without that insulating layer, dark dust and rock absorbed sunlight and accelerated melting. Monitoring teams reported bare ice at altitudes that were reliably snow-covered a generation ago. Researchers say the pattern is compounding: each lost metre of thickness makes the remaining ice more exposed to the next warm season.
Downstream risks grow
Melting glaciers feed rivers that supply drinking water, hydropower and irrigation across Europe. Nepal plans to drain four glacial lakes after deadly floods, a sign of the hazard building in mountain regions worldwide. In Canada, studies found wildfires and permafrost thaw are themselves releasing more greenhouse gases, a feedback that complicates national climate accounting.
Europe's rivers run low
Half of Europe faced very strong heat stress this summer, and drought has lowered rivers enough to expose sunken Nazi warships in the Danube and to threaten barge traffic that carries freight across the continent. Low water forces cargo onto roads, raising costs and emissions. Meanwhile, US senators from both parties struck a deal to vote on the largest overhaul of federal energy and environmental rules in decades, and researchers proposed a new method to estimate the combined pollution and health costs of clusters of data centres rather than reviewing each one separately.