This week we welcomed Samuel Weber from SLF Davos to our glaciological seminar! He presented a physically based framework for understanding permafrost rock slope destabilization, combining lab experiments, field data, and mechanical modelling, with the Matterhorn as study site. @slfdavos.bsky.social

🏔️ A new study by Aaron Cremona, @matthias-huss.bsky.social , Marijn van der Meer, Daniel Farinotti and colleagues reconstructs daily mass balance for every glacier in the Swiss Alps from 2010-2024. Swiss glaciers lost ~25% of their ice volume in just 14 years! 🔗 doi.org/10.5194/tc-2...

Last chance to register! 🔔 Mylène Jacquemart is organising a SPI Field & Safety Course this Friday (29 May) at ALPOLE, EPFL Sion. Free, open to all career stages. Topics: field team culture, leadership, decision-making, bystander intervention. More info: swisspolar.ch/building-a-p...

🏔️ New paper: 2025 saw record-breaking glacier mass loss in #CentralAsia ❄️📉 Glaciers lost ~30 ± 6 km³ of ice in a single year, about 2% of their remaining mass. Another alarming record after the Alps (2022), Western Canada & USA (2023) and Svalbard (2024). 🔗 iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Swiss glacier melt season starts today, and immediately with an early-season #heatwave. 🇨🇭🧊☀️ Snow cover on Swiss #glaciers is currently ~25% below average after a too dry winter, while forecasts show rapid mass loss in the coming week. Bad news for our glaciers :( #GLAMOS

Looking for a thesis in glaciology? VAW Glaciology at ETH Zurich has 4 Master's theses open, covering topics from ice temperatures and mountain hazards to gravimetry and ice avalanche dynamics. Full descriptions: vaw.ethz.ch/en/education...

Today we welcomed Dia Martinez Gracey to our glaciological seminar at ETH Zurich! She presented a proxy-based framework to assess glacier thermal structure at the regional scale, applied to Alaska and Svalbard, no coupled thermomechanical modelling required. Thank you Dia!

Goodbye Vienna! #EGU26 was the biggest General Assembly ever: 22,497 participants from 125 countries. We contributed 17 presentations and 9 sessions convened. Thanks to the organizers of @egu.eu for a week of great discussions within the cryo community and beyond. See you at #EGU27!

1/3 The #GLAMOS winter snow accumulation report for Swiss glaciers in 2026 is out! Snow depth measurements on 25 glaciers across Switzerland were carried out in April/May together with colleagues from the Universities of Zurich and Fribourg. #Glaciology #SwissGlaciers

Vienna, here we come! VAW glaciology will be at #EGU2026 (04-08 May) with a packed programme across the whole week. #Glaciology #Cryosphere #ETHZurich @egu.eu

These numbers tell a bigger story.~15% of global #glaciers are within #UNESCO sites, yet >40 could reach critical thresholds by 2050. Even our most protected landscapes are under pressure. 🔗 www.unesco.org/en/articles/...

Our #VAW Annual Report 2025 is out! From the Blatten rockfall and its interplay between glaciology and hydraulic engineering to six completed doctoral theses, 2025 was a full year at VAW. Full report: ethz.ch/content/dam/...

1/2 Earth's glaciers lost 408 Gt of ice in 2025 alone, equal to 1.1 mm of sea-level rise. Six of the highest mass-loss years on record have occurred in the past seven years. Our group contributed via #GLAMOS, the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network. 🧊

#GLAMOS winter surveys are underway. On April 7, measurements on #Aletsch Glacier showed ~0.5–4.5 m of snow, close to the recent average. In contrast, #Pers Glacier had much less snow, with maximum depths of only 1–2 m. More updates in the coming weeks, stay tuned :)

Safe and effective fieldwork goes beyond logistics and equipment, it also depends on strong team culture and communication. Our colleague Mylène Jacquemart is offering a course on "Building a positive team culture for safe and effective fieldwork". 📅 29 May 2026 🔗 swisspolar.ch/building-a-p...

1/2 A first in glacier modeling from our PhD student Marijn van der Meer and colleagues! Their preprint introduces the first LSTM neural network applied to glacier mass balance modeling, built within the Mass Balance Machine (#MBM) framework. 🏔️❄️

1/2 The biggest airborne GPR frame ever flown, hovering over the thickest ice in the European Alps. Our team just tested the new 12.5 MHz #AirETH system above Aletsch Glacier with #AirZermatt.

How stable are the world’s mountain water sources? VAW Glaciology joins MountAInWater, a USD 9.5M project at ISTA using AI to reanalyze glacier, snow, and permafrost changes, with a focus on tipping points and future water availability. ista.ac.at/en/news/unde... @schmidtsciences.bsky.social

Glaciers need our attention more than ever. On 21 March (World Day for Glaciers), join us at ETH Zurich for a unique programme between research, fairy tales & virtual reality.

Could avalanches explain extreme local glacier accumulation? A new preprint by our colleague @marinkneib.bsky.social shows 2 years of monitoring of an avalanche cone on Argentière Glacier using UAV surveys and a 7-camera time-lapse photogrammetry array. egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/20...

Why did glaciers reach their peak size at such different times during the last Ice Age? 🏔️❄️ New research led by VAW colleague Lukas Rettig explores why some Alpine glaciers stayed massive while others retreated. The secret? It’s all about seasonality.

A new Perspective paper in Nature Communications Earth & Environment compares the 2021 Chamoli disaster with the recent Blatten avalanche. Why did one kill >200 people while the other caused only one casualty? Link to paper: www.nature.com/articles/s43...

The winter surveys of #GLAMOS are just around the corner! ❄️⛰️ Yesterday we headed into the field with a big group for a safety training to refresh our techniques and safety protocols. Now let’s hope the #glaciers get plenty of snow so they’re well prepared for spring and summer. 🌨️

Life on Svalbard, in the northernmost town in the world. Two of our team members, PhD student Janosch Beer and master student Valentin Künzler, spent 2 months at 78°N, from polar night, when the sun never rises, into the first light of the Arctic dawn in February.

📢 New paper in Nature Climate Change! Congrats to our colleague Marit van Tiel on co-authoring “Cascading downstream impacts of water cycle changes in mountain regions”, now featured on the cover! 🌍🎉 How mountain water changes ripple far downstream 👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚁❄️ Can we measure ice thickness with a GPR system attached to a helicopter in #Greenland? Yes, we can! Our new preprint shows successful helicopter-borne radar surveys over outlet glaciers, opening new possibilities for mapping ice thickness. 📄 egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/20...

🧊 When melting ice becomes a tourist attraction New comment (incl. @matthias-huss.bsky.social ) on the paradox of #glacier tourism: last-chance visits, short-term fixes, and glaciers as symbols of #climateaction. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... Photo: Rhône glacier (Sept 2023)

📄 New preprint by Christophe Ogier et al. 🏔️💧 Hidden subglacial water storage may have contributed to the June 2024 #LaBérarde flood. Model results point to up to ~10⁵ m³ stored beneath Glacier de Bonne Pierre. 🔗 doi.org/10.5194/egus... 📷 Benoît Lagneux

💧Glaciers are water towers for Central Asia, but for how long? In our study on the Tien Shan, we show that #glacier melt can temporarily boost #runoff until mid-century, but continued ice loss leads to a growing risk of unmet water demand in summer. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Latest #GLAMOS report on #glacier change in #Switzerland (2025) out today🧊🇨🇭 ** Swiss glaciers lost ~3% of their remaining ice in one year due to a dry winter and a warm summer. **159 glaciers (11%) have already disappeared. 👉 Full report: doi.glamos.ch/pubs/glbulle...

We’re advertising a fully funded 4-year PhD position on modelling firn changes at the glacier scale within the SNF-funded deFIRN project, based at ETH Zurich & WSL. Apply here: jobs.ethz.ch/job/view/JOP... @wslresearch.bsky.social @slfdavos.bsky.social

A place where the sun never sets, surrounded by ice for 400 km in any direction. 🇦🇶 We received greetings from our colleagues Ari David and Huw Horgan, currently on the Ross Ice Shelf with @swais2c.bsky.social, drilling into Antarctica’s past to better understand ice-sheet change and sea-level rise.

Glaciers buffer droughts, but for how long? In the extreme summer of 2022, glacier melt helped sustain Swiss rivers, locally offsetting up to 70% of water deficits. But shrinking glacier area means total meltwater is already declining, a warning sign for future droughts. 👉 doi.org/10.5194/hess...

🎄🫕 A wonderful get-together at this year’s VAW Glaciology Christmas fondue! It is our moment to reflect on 2025 together with current and former members of VAW Glaciology and celebrate another year of glaciological research.

🚨 New paper alert! ❄️ How many glaciers will exist by 2100 at +1.5 °C vs +4 °C warming? Our new study led by @landervt.bsky.social , projects the extinction year of ~200,000 glaciers worldwide. 🌍🧊 Can you imagine the Alps with only 20 glaciers remaining? 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Looking beneath a #glacier after a major rock–ice avalanche. 🏔️🧊🚁 Using our helicopter-borne GPR #AIRETH, we surveyed the Scerscen-Eisnase after the April 2024 rock–ice avalanche to map bedrock and internal structures. Thanks #HeliBernina for the flight!

Many thanks to this week’s Glaciological Seminar speaker, Magali Ponds from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel! Magali shared fascinating insights into how irrigation influences glacier mass balance in High Mountain Asia. Check out our upcoming Glaciological Seminars here: vaw.ethz.ch/en/events/gl...

🌟 Great news from the Swiss Geoscience Meeting! 🌟 Our PhD student Marijn won the Swiss Snow, Ice & Permafrost Society Prize for her presentation on data-driven glacier mass-balance modelling. Well done! 🏔️👏 Explore the Mass Balance Machine project: github.com/ODINN-SciML/... @unibe.ch

Ever wondered what a #glacier looks like from the inside? Last weekend our postdocs Christophe Ogier & Marin Kneib descended 60 m into a moulin on the #PlaineMorte glacier for surveying englacial melt channels. Photographer Pierre Jeanneret captured the stunning hidden world below ❄️🧗‍♂️🧊

🚨 New paper! Led by Laura Gabriel, we used Surface NMR to probe liquid water inside #Rhonegletscher 🇨🇭🧊💧 Despite heavy noise, SNMR detected a thin (~1 m) water-rich layer, consistent with GPR. A big step toward mapping englacial hydrology with SNMR! 📄 Paper link: tc.copernicus.org/articles/19/...

New paper led by our PhD @alexvdesch.bsky.social ! 🇨🇭🧊 We show how glacio-hydrological model results depend strongly on precipitation forcing and spatial resolution. High-res data = key for reliable #glacier runoff estimates. Check out the study 📄 hess.copernicus.org/articles/29/...

📢 New paper! Our colleague Marin Kneib shows that #avalanches are key for glacier survival worldwide. 💡 First global estimate of avalanche contribution to glacier mass balance: • 11% in the Alps • 22% in New Zealand • Negative in the Andes 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What does glacier fieldwork look like for @matthias-huss.bsky.social , head of #GLAMOS? 🧊📏 Politiken followed him on #PlaineMorte, where he documents the beauty, and rapid loss, of Swiss ice. 📄 politiken.dk/edition/news...

🚨 New paper! ❄️📄 New paper by @matthias-huss.bsky.social Huss, Andreas Bauder & colleagues document the extinction of #Pizolgletscher, using 130+ years of observations 📊🏔️. A rare chance to follow a glacier from a healthy state to its final disappearance. 🔗 doi.org/10.1017/aog.2025.10024

#OpenCall The Polar Access Fund for early-career researchers in polar science is now open! Applications welcome by 20 January 2026, 12:00 (noon, Swiss time) Access the call documents: swisspolar.ch/spi-funding-... We look forward to your applications! #fieldwork #Arctic #Antarctica

🚨 New paper! Co-authored by VAW colleagues Marijn van der Meer & @matthias-huss.bsky.social , this new paper present the Mass Balance Machine (MBM), an XGBoost model that predicts seasonal glacier mass balance from sparse data and often beats traditional models. 🔗 tc.copernicus.org/articles/19/...

🌟 Hoeraa! Great news from VAW Glaciology! Both Prof. Daniel Farinotti and @matthias-huss.bsky.social Huss made it onto Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers list, the top 1% most cited scientists worldwide over the past decade. A fantastic achievement! ❄️📚

Aurora over the Alps! 🌌❄️ A powerful solar storm hit Earth, and the northern lights reached far south. Thanks to the long-exposure capabilities of several Alpine webcams, this rare phenomenon was beautifully captured above our #glaciers. The purple glow created magical scenes.

What a blast! 🚀 At ETH Zurich’s Treffpunkt Science City, our VAW Glaciology member Dr. Mylène Jacquemart shared insights on alpine hazards, rock–ice avalanches & the forces shaping our mountains. A packed hall. Great to see so many young minds interested in climate change! ❄️

🧊 A new mass-balance season is in its second month. How are Swiss glaciers doing so far? Time for a check! Real-time #observations and #modelling for 12 #glaciers show nothing exceptional so far: snow cover remains thin (25–100 cm). Conditions have returned to average or slightly below. Data: GLAMOS