Swiss Alps hits annual glacier tipping point weeks early

The snow and ice accumulated in the Swiss Alps over the winter has already melted away, a monitoring service said on Friday, marking the second earliest arrival of a tipping point known as "glacier loss day".

All further melting between now and October will see the size of Switzerland's glaciers shrink, according to Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland (GLAMOS).

The tipping point is usually reached in August and its early arrival is another hammer blow for the Alpine nation's 1,400 glaciers, which have been shrinking at an alarming rate.

"Glacier Loss Day is reached in Switzerland," GLAMOS chief Matthias Huss wrote on X, explaining that winter snowfall had been low and June had been the second warmest on record.

"From now on all melt that occurs on glaciers until October is unsustainable," said Huss.

He pointed out that the only time on record that that the tipping point had arrived earlier had been "the record-shattering year 2022" when it came on June 26.

"Expect big ice loss due to the prolonged melt season," he said.

Glaciers in the Swiss Alps began to retreat about 170 years ago. The retreat was initially modest but in recent decades, melting has accelerated significantly.