Swiss glaciers lost 19.4% of their ice volume between 2021 and 2026. A winter with little snow and a summer of scorching heatwaves sped up the retreat. The annual monitoring report found that ice volume fell by 5.5% in the first eight months of 2026 alone. The damage is visible; fossil fuel pollution and the destruction of nature show the choices that helped create it.
Ice Giving Way
The Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network and the Swiss Commission for Cryosphere Observation reported that individual glaciers lost between 2.5 metres and 4 metres of mean thickness in 2026. Scientists haven’t yet compiled a formal count of glaciers lost this year, but they’ve seen a number of small ones disappear.
Matthias Huss, a glaciologist at ETH Zürich and lead author of the report, said many people don’t realise how quickly glaciers are retreating, or that sites now bare once lay beneath hundreds of metres of ice. “I visited one last week and it’s so impressive to stand in this moonlike landscape where there was a big layer of ice – an extensive glacier – just a few years ago,” he said. “And now it’s a rock desert where there’s some scattered blocks of old ice still lying around and melting on the hot rocks.”
Glaciers aren’t simply retreating from the surface. Huss said streams beneath the ice excavate caverns, leaving “huge holes like cheese in the middle of the ice that have collapsing roofs.” These processes, he said, “tear the glaciers apart and make them retreat even faster.”
Europe is warming twice as fast as the global average because of heat-trapping fossil fuel pollution and the destruction of nature, with Alpine areas among those seeing the most dramatic changes. MeteoSwiss found that April to September was the hottest and driest summer half-year since records began in 1864. Over that period, humanity has put 1.8 trillion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and heated the planet by about 1.4C.
The 2026 ice loss came just short of the record set in 2022, despite worse summer heat. Scientists attributed the difference to limited Saharan dust deposits, slightly greater snow cover at the end of winter and more sunlight during summer. Huss visited the former Plattalvafirn, or Griess glacier, in September. It once covered a mountain flank and lost 99% of its area in 20 years. “What we are seeing now is a complete explosion of these melt rates, leading to the disintegration of glaciers,” Huss said. “They’re really just falling apart.”
Wet Fields, Different Crops
In the Netherlands, farmers and researchers are testing rice cultivation as an alternative to cattle grass farming on peat soils. Peat covers roughly one-tenth of the country. Farmers drain it to grow grass for cattle, but drying peat releases millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and can cause land in the worst-affected areas to sink by several centimetres a year. Wageningen University says emissions from Dutch peat soils account for around 2% to 3% of the country’s total emissions. The peat problem also affects Germany, Belgium and the Baltic states.
The pilot covers 0.6 hectares, and organisers aim to produce around three tonnes of short-grain rice for sushi or risotto. The team is testing about 30 cultivars from Russia, China, Japan and Uzbekistan. Farmer Sander Roeleveld, 53, works the crop with a combine harvester in a wet field between Amsterdam and The Hague. He calls himself a “pioneer.”
“My goal is to show that more things are possible on wetland than just grass,” Roeleveld said. “Of course, when you have had cows for 600 years, it's really hard to imagine that you want to do something else than having milk from your cow.” He said he wants to show that change is possible “for the benefit of the future.”
Julian Helfenstein, a 36-year-old researcher at Wageningen University and Research, is piloting the project with colleagues from Leiden University. Researchers are comparing carbon dioxide and methane emissions from rice cultivation with those from maintaining grassland, to check whether the proposed solution creates a worse problem. “So far the results are promising,” Helfenstein said.
A Small Crop, A Huge Coffee Trade
In Sicily, the Morettino family estate on the outskirts of Palermo has produced Arabica coffee grown and harvested entirely in Italy for the first time. The plantation produces around 100 kilograms of coffee drupes, yielding just over 15 kilograms of roasted beans. The project involves the University and Botanical Garden of Palermo in research into how tropical crops adapt to the changing Mediterranean climate. It remains far from large-scale commercial production.
That small harvest sits beside a much larger industry. Italy is the EU’s leading producer of roasted coffee, producing more than 400 tonnes in 2025, while importing its raw, unroasted green coffee. The industry includes around 1,000 roasters and generates annual turnover of 5.9 billion euros. Coffee processing can use between 50 and 200 litres of water per kilogram of green coffee, and wastewater can affect local ecosystems if it isn’t properly treated. If cultivation moves into areas where seasonal drought is becoming endemic, reducing water use in both growing and processing will be essential.