Glaciers all over the world, from the Alps to New Zealand, are rapidly melting. Switzerland plays a central role in monitoring them and the increasingly clear consequences of their disappearance. The first-ever World Glacier Day on March 21 is meant to bring awareness to this phenomenon which is happening in even the coldest regions on Earth. “It is shocking to see how much ice is disappearing every year,” says Michael Zemp, a glaciologist at the University of Zurich and director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS). Last year, the world’s glaciers lost 450 billion tons (Gt) of ice, according to estimates released by the WGMS to mark World Glacier Day. It’s less than was lost in 2023, but it was enough to make 2024 the fourth-worst year for glacier melt since 1975 and the third year in a row in which all the world’s regions experienced a net loss in glacier ice. In the last 50 years, glaciers have lost enough ice to cover all of Germany in a layer 25 metres thick ...
