The ice bank · The road to COP31
Between July and September about 2,200 billion litres of water melted out of Swiss glaciers, more than four times the drinking water all Swiss households use in a year.
"Alpine glaciers have no chance of surviving in the long term under such conditions," the Swiss Federal Institute WSL wrote on 1 October.
In the Arctic the minimum of 4.60 million square kilometres ties 2026 with 2025, 2008 and 2010 for the tenth-lowest since satellite records began in 1979, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). It is not a record. The pattern matters more than the year.
Sources
- S-40 · GLAMOS, Annual mass balance of Swiss glaciers in 2025/2026 (23 September 2026), and the GLAMOS/SCNAT press release of 1 October 2026
- S-41 · WSL, Swiss glaciers lose another five per cent of their volume, 1 October 2026
- S-68 · Mannerfelt et al., Halving of Swiss glacier volume since 1931 observed from terrestrial image photogrammetry, The Cryosphere 16, 3249-3268, 2022
- S-69 · AFP via eNCA, Swiss glaciers shrank by a quarter in past decade: study (GLAMOS), 2 October 2025
- S-43 · GLAMOS, Annual report 2024 (final 2024 loss, 2.4%; the October 2024 first estimate was about 2.5%)
- S-42 · NSIDC, Arctic sea ice minimum ties tenth lowest, 23 September 2026; Sea Ice Index G02135 v4.0
- S-67 · NSIDC Sea Ice Index, Version 4 (G02135), Fetterer et al. 2025: daily ice extent of 12 September 2026 and the 1981-2010 median edge for that day (map)
Corrections to this story are listed on the last page.