"One of climate change's most tangible effects, glacier shrinkage is visible in the Massif des Diablerets near Gstaad," says Dr. Fischer, who comes here every year to gather data on glacier mass balance. "Around Scex Rouge and Glacier 3000, the natural beauty of “eternal” ice and snow is steadily vanishing. Over the past 170 years, the Tsanfleuron glacier, the largest in the Massif des Diablerets, has lost about two-thirds of its initial area. Since mass balance monitoring* began in 2010, not a single year has shown a positive net balance (mass gain): in 6 years, heavy ice losses were recorded. A sad fate for Tsanfleuron, likely to disappear around 2060, with smaller glaciers Scex Rouge and Prapio vanishing in 10-20 years.

"Glacier shrinkage means less appeal for tourism in high-mountain areas, may cause natural hazards and reduce summer water input into artificial lakes that produce electricity. With “business as usual”, two-thirds of glaciers' ice volume will disappear worldwide by 2100. Under the Paris agreement (temperature rise 1.5-2°C), it would only be about a third. Unless a global “best-case scenario” saves 25-30% of current glacier volume, almost all the Swiss Alps glaciers will vanish by 2100."

* Glacier Monitoring Switzerland, www.glamos.ch