A fifth of the ice mass in Switzerland has disappeared in the last decade – and this year's record summer was the worst in a long time, a new report shows.

Rarely have glaciers in Switzerland melted so quickly, the exception being the heat wave of 2003, claims Matthias Huss at the Glacier Monitoring Network.

Despite the snow-filled winter, the ice mass has shrunk by 2.5 percent so far this year, according to a report from the Swiss Academies of Science.

The snow acts as a protective layer and at the end of March there was more than twice as much snow than normal at altitudes above 2,000 meters.

But the exceptional snowfall was followed by an intense period of rising temperatures and little precipitation. On the 2,540-meter-high Weissfluhjoch, more than a centimeter of snow never fell between May and September – the mountain peak has not had so little precipitation in 81 years.

“Not only did large quantities of winter snow melt away, but also ice,” says Huss.

He warns that several of the country's smaller glaciers will disappear completely if global warming continues at the same rate.

If winter hadn't contributed so much snow, 2018 would have broken all records.

– 2003 remains the worst year for glaciers, but 2018 is clearly among the top ten of the last century – and among the top three for some glaciers.

Source: TT