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Alpinists hiking on the receding Rhone glacier walk past a portion at the very bottom of the glacier that is covered in reflective tarp on June 20, 2022 near Gletsch, Switzerland. The tarps, which are designed to reflect away the sun’s rays and reduce melting, cover a hewn ice grotto that is an annual tourist attraction. This summer is likely to be especially brutal for Switzerland’s glaciers. Normally in mid-June, the glaciers would still be covered in snow that protects them from the sun, though because very little snow fell this year, the glaciers are already exposed and melting rapidly under conditions that are more typical for late July or August. Matthias Huss, a glaciologist with ETH Zurich university and head of the Swiss glacier monitoring network, and his colleagues are studying approximately 20 glaciers, including the Rhone glacier, across Switzerland to observe the effects of global warming. All of the glaciers are melting, and he predicts that if we do not meet global climate goals Switzerland’s glaciers will be mostly gone by 2100. The Rhone glacier has lost an average of five meters per year in vertical thickness over the last ten years. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
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