Alpine Glaciers Rapidly Going Down Drain of Europe's Heat Waves

Europe's heat isn't just breaking records—it's stripping the Alps bare months ahead of schedule. Swiss scientists say this year's hot spells erased all the snow cover the country's glaciers gained over the winter by June 29, on what PlanetSki notes is "glacier loss day." This year, it came roughly a month earlier than usual, leaving exposed ice poised for rapid melt through the rest of the summer. "We are now in a state where we should normally be in August," glaciologist Matthias Huss of ETH Zurich tells the New York Times, calling it "really a worrying situation."

The Alps' glaciers store and slowly release water that Europe relies on for drinking, agriculture, hydropower, and cooling nuclear plants. Once protective snow cover is gone, meltwater lost from the ice is gone for good, shrinking that long-term reserve and bringing closer a future in which water supplies grow less dependable "in 10, 20 years," says Huss, not centuries. Switzerland entered spring with about 25% less snow than the 2010–2020 average; back-to-back heat waves then pushed temperatures to record highs across Western Europe. On the Rhône Glacier, Huss measured more than three feet of ice loss in just 10 days in June, while the snow line on the Great Aletsch Glacier jumped upward by over 1,300 feet during the heat wave.