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When a Swiss glaciologist initially explored the Rhône ice field three and a half decades back, the ice was only a short walk from the location where his mom and dad would park their vehicle.

"When I first stepped onto the ice... I felt a special feeling of timelessness," recalls the scientist.

In the present day, it's half an hour starting from that very location and the scene is very different.

"Whenever I revisit, I recall what it was like before," recalls Matthias, currently serving as director of the Swiss glacier monitoring network, "how the glacier looked when I was a child."

International Ice Decline

Parallel narratives emerge for many glaciers around the world, as these glacial structures are diminishing - rapidly.

During 2024, glaciers excluding the enormous ice fields from Greenland and Antarctic regions discharged 450 billion tonnes of frozen water, according to a new WMO study.

This equals a frozen block 4.3 miles in height, 4.3 miles wide and 7km deep - sufficient water to fill 180 million Olympic swimming pools.

"Glaciers are thawing globally," explains Prof Ben Marzeion from the Geography Department from the University of Bremen. "They are sitting in atmospheric conditions that's particularly damaging to them now because of climate change."

Switzerland's Ice Masses Dramatically Impacted

The glaciers of Switzerland have suffered especially severe impacts, losing a quarter of their glacial volume in the last 10 years, data from the monitoring network revealed this week.

"It's truly challenging to understand the magnitude of this ice loss," explains Matthias Huss.

But photos - captured from orbit and Earth - speak volumes.

Satellite images reveal the way Rhône Glacier has changed since 1990, when Dr Huss first visited. At the front of the glacier has formed a water body where there used to be ice.

Rapid Melting

Up until not long ago, glaciologists in the Alps typically regarded a 2 percent ice reduction in a single year as exceptionally severe.

Subsequently, during 2022 blew that idea out of the water, recording almost 6 percent of the nation's existing ice mass disappearing in just one year.

This event was then accompanied by significant losses in 2023, 2024 and now 2025 too.

Regine Hock, professor of glaciology with the University of Oslo, has been visiting the Alpine region since the seventies.

The transformations during her career are "really stunning", she states, yet "present conditions show dramatic alterations in only a short period."

Particular Ice Mass Cases

Clariden's ice mass, in north-eastern Switzerland, maintained relative equilibrium up until the late 1900s - accumulating nearly equivalent ice through snowfall compared to what melted away.

But this century, its decline has accelerated.

For many smaller glaciers, including the Pizol glacier in the north-east Swiss Alps, it's been too much.

"This is one of the glaciers that I observed, and now it's completely gone," explains the glaciologist. "This certainly causes sadness."

Long-term Perspective

Photographs allow us to look even further back in time.

The Gries Glacier, within southern Swiss territory adjacent to Italy, has receded approximately nearly 1.4 miles in the past century. The former glacier terminus location is now a large glacial lake.

In south-east Switzerland, the Pers Glacier once fed the more extensive Morteratsch glacier, which flows down towards the valley. Currently, they don't connect anymore.

Additionally, the most extensive glacier in the Alps, Aletsch Glacier, has retreated approximately about 2.3km (1.4 miles) during the previous seventy-five years. In locations previously frozen, there are now trees.

Natural vs Human Causes

Glaciers have advanced and retreated naturally for millions of years, obviously.

In the cold snaps during the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s - related to this cooler climatic period - glaciers commonly grew.

Throughout this period, numerous were thought to be bewitched according to Alpine mythological traditions, their advances linked to spiritual forces as they threatened hamlets and farmland.

Stories even exist of villagers calling on priests to interact with ice mass entities and persuade them to retreat uphill.

Contemporary Climate Change

Ice masses started their broad decline across the Alps around the mid-19th century, although specific dates differed depending on location.

This aligned with increasing industrialization, when burning of fossil fuels, especially coal, started warming our planet, but it's hard to disentangle natural versus anthropogenic factors from that historical period.

Concerning undeniable evidence pertains to the dramatically accelerated melting since approximately the 1980s don't result from natural processes.

If not for human-caused global warming - by burning fossil fuels and discharging massive volumes of carbon dioxide – glaciers should theoretically to remain relatively constant.

"We can solely account for it when we consider greenhouse gas releases," states Ben Marzeion.

Upcoming Projections

What is even more sobering pertains to these enormous glacial systems may require many years to fully adjust to the rapidly warming climate.

This indicates that, if planetary heating stopped immediately, glaciers would continue to retreat.

"A substantial fraction {of the future melt|of coming glacial loss|of anticipated ice disappearance