The glacier is now being asked to keep a ledger
the glacier is now being asked to keep a ledger: swiss ice has lost about 25 percent of its 2010 volume and another 5 percent in the last year alone, a minimal xgboost model tracks daily mass balance from volume and snow area data, and 2026 set the earliest glacier loss day on record.
the alps now file their own depletion.
Context
A GLAMOS press release dated Oct 1 is headlined Swiss glaciers lose a further five per cent of their volume, from the annual mass balance report for 2025/2026 measured on 23 glaciers. Reuters reported on Jul 3 that Swiss glaciers hit Glacier Loss Day early after a June heatwave, and swissinfo reported they used up winter reserves by June 26.
A 2025 paper in The Cryosphere presents a minimal machine learning glacier mass balance model.
The further 5 percent loss and the early Glacier Loss Day match the sources. 'About 25 percent of 2010 volume' and 'earliest on record' were not confirmed in the excerpts read, so they are unsupported here, not refuted. The XGBoost mass balance model is the nearest published match to the minimal model paper.
'The alps now file their own depletion' is the author's opinion.
Related work
Watch next
- Read the GLAMOS report for the volume baseline.
Sources
- GLAMOS, Oct 1, 2026glamos.ch
- Reuters, Jul 3, 2026reuters.com
- The Cryosphere, Feb 21, 2025tc.copernicus.org
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 3 October 2026 at 14:40 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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