The current year 2023 "won't be good" for Swiss glaciers, though the melt is not expected to be as significant as 2022, which set a record, said Matthias Juss, Switzerland's leading glacier specialist.

"There is still more than a month until the end of the melting season. How are #швейцарските glaciers doing right now? Not good," said the specialist, who heads the Swiss Glamos Observatory Network, in a post on Xx (formerly known as Twitter).

"Even if the situation is not as extreme as in 2022, we are still on track to experience the second most negative year on record."

"Despite a rather cool period in recent weeks, all glaciers have been below the average level of the last 10 years. And a new heat wave is underway," added Matthias Juss, who is looking forward to the final measurement data. They will be ready in mid-September.

Switzerland's glaciers are melting at the fastest rate since records began.

Last year, Swiss glaciers broke all melting records due to dry winters and extreme summer heat.

Three cubic kilometers of ice have evaporated, which is six percent of the total volume of Swiss glaciers, according to the expert committee of the Swiss Academy of Sciences for the Cryosphere Measurement Network. Previously, a loss of two percent in one year was considered "extreme."

According to Matthias Juss, without the implementation of measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and protect the climate, glaciers in Switzerland will almost disappear "by the end of the century".

The head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Petteri Taalas, is of an even darker opinion. Based on statistics for 2022, he estimated that "the glacier game has been lost because carbon dioxide concentrations are already very high and sea level rise is likely to continue for thousands of years to come."

Switzerland's glaciers have halved.

According to the 2022 WMO data released in April this year, over the past decade, the world's observed glaciers have lost much more than the average amount of ice. The cumulative loss of glacier thickness since 1970 amounts to almost 30 meters, the UN organization notes.

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