GLAMOS: A Century of Watching Switzerland's Ice Retreat

GLAMOS is run jointly by ETH Zurich and the Universities of Fribourg and Zurich to carry out Switzerland's national long-term glacier monitoring, measuring length change, mass balance and volume across the Swiss Alps. Field teams and automated stations track roughly a hundred glaciers a year out of the country's approximately 1,400, feeding data into the World Glacier Monitoring Service and national climate reporting used to plan water supply, hydropower and hazard management as the ice retreats. The programme's 2024 Swiss Glacier Bulletin found that observed glaciers retreated between 4 and 80 metres in 2023, a pace 23% faster than the 2010-2020 average.