Sharjah24 – AFP: Switzerland's glaciers lost six percent of their total volume this year due to a dry winter and repeated summer heatwaves, shattering previous ice melt records, a report revealed Wednesday.
The study by the Cryospheric Commission (CC) of the Swiss Academy of Sciences laid bare the drastic scale of glacial retreat -- which is only set to get worse.
"2022 was a disastrous year for Swiss glaciers: all ice melt records were smashed," the CC said, adding that a two percent loss in 12 months had previously been considered "extreme".
Three cubic kilometres of ice -- three trillion litres of water -- have melted away, the report said.
"It's not possible to slow down the melting in the short term," said glaciology professor Matthias Huss, head of Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland, which documents long-term glacier changes in the Alps and is coordinated by the CC.
If carbon dioxide emissions are reduced and the climate protected, "this might save about one third of the total volumes in Switzerland in the best case", he said.
Otherwise, the country "will be losing almost everything by the end of the century".
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