THEODORA PETER Global warming has accelerated the retreat of Alpine glaciers, including those in Switzerland, which have lost almost 40 per cent of their volume since 2000. Two catastrophic years, 2022 and 2023, obliterated ten per cent of Switzerland’s total glacier volume alone. Glaciers continued to shrink in summer 2024, even though the preceding winter had seen exceptionally high snowfall. The United Nations has named 2025 the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation to highlight the urgency of the situation. The clock is ticking. Unless global warming is capped below 2°C, Switzerland’s glaciers may disappear altogether by the end of the century. But even if global warming remains below 2°C, it still may only be possible to save a quarter of Switzerland’s current glacial ice by 2100. Glaciers contain information on how the Earth’s climate and our own environmental past have evolved over time. The chemical and biological compounds trapped in their deep layers of ice constitute a natural scientific archive dating back thousands of years. Preserving this information has become a race against time. Drilling down to the data of endangered glaciers Glaciers not only store huge amounts of water. Their compacted layers of ice are also a treasure trove of information on the history of the Earth’s climate. Scientists in Switzerland and abroad are collecting ice cores from endangered glaciers to preserve this natural archive for posterity. An archive for future generations Launched ten years ago, Ice Memory is a project that aims to safeguard a heritage of ice cores from particularly vulnerable glaciers – before it is too late. The programme involving French, Italian and Swiss scientific institutions is supported by entities like UNESCO and counts renowned Swiss climate physicist Thomas Stocker as one of its key protagonists. “We must preserve this heritage for future generations,” says Stocker, who is a board member of the Ice Memory Foundation. A bespoke ice vault is beIt looks a bit forlorn, the research team’s camp in the nolonger-so-stable ice at Lyskamm in the Monte Rosa massif. Photo: Riccardo Selvatico, Ice Memory Foundation Swiss Review / July 2025 / No.3 11 Nature and the environment
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