Swiss glaciers lost 19.4% of their ice volume between 2021 and 2026. Meanwhile, Dutch farmers and Italian researchers are testing how agriculture can adapt to warmer conditions. In the first eight months of 2026 alone, Swiss glaciers lost 5.5% of their volume, according to an annual monitoring report.
The loss came after a winter with little snow and a summer of scorching heatwaves. It fell just short of the record set in 2022. Scientists haven’t yet compiled a formal count of glaciers lost this year, but they reported seeing a number of small glaciers disappear.
Glaciers retreat as heat intensifies
The Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network and the Swiss Commission for Cryosphere Observation found that individual glaciers’ mean thickness fell by between 2.5 metres and 4 metres in 2026. 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,” Huss 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.”
Scientists increasingly see glaciers collapsing from inside. Streams beneath the ice excavate caverns, rather than the glaciers retreating only because of surface heat. “You have huge holes like cheese in the middle of the ice that have collapsing roofs,” Huss said. “These are processes that 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. Alpine areas face some of the most dramatic changes. An analysis published by MeteoSwiss found that the April-to-September summer half-year was the hottest and driest since records began in 1864.
The former Plattalvafirn, or Griess glacier, lost 99% of its area in 20 years. Huss visited it in September. It once covered a mountain flank and ranked among the world’s most closely monitored glaciers in the 1950s. Huss worked with its data as a PhD student. “What we are seeing now is a complete explosion of these melt rates, leading to the disintegration of glaciers,” he said. “They’re really just falling apart.”
Farmers test new crops on changing land
In the Netherlands, a 0.6-hectare pilot is testing whether rice cultivation can keep peat soils wet while offering an alternative to cattle grass farming. 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 make land in the worst-affected areas sink by several centimetres a year. Wageningen University estimates emissions from Dutch peat soils account for around 2% to 3% of the country’s total emissions. Germany, Belgium and the Baltic states face the peat problem too.
The rice project aims to produce around three tonnes of short-grain rice suitable for sushi or risotto. Its team is testing about 30 cultivars from Russia, China, Japan and Uzbekistan. Farmer Sander Roeleveld, 53, drives a combine harvester across the 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. “I just want to show that things can be changed 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. “So far the results are promising,” Helfenstein said.
Coffee cultivation moves north
In Sicily, the Morettino family estate on the outskirts of Palermo has produced Arabica coffee beans grown and harvested entirely in Italy for the first time. The plantation sits in the San Lorenzo ai Colli area, a few hundred metres above sea level, and produces around 100 kilograms of coffee drupes, yielding just over 15 kilograms of roasted beans. The University and Botanical Garden of Palermo are researching how tropical crops adapt to the changing Mediterranean climate.
The project remains far from large-scale commercial production. Coffee processing can use between 50 and 200 litres of water per kilogram of green coffee, and it creates wastewater that can affect local ecosystems if it isn’t properly treated. If cultivation shifts to areas where seasonal drought is becoming endemic, growers will need to reduce water use in both growing and processing.