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glaciers
Swiss Glacier Collapse That Buried Village Likely a 'Direct Result of Our Warming Climate'
"What happened to Birch Glacier is what we would expect from rising temperatures in the Alps and elsewhere," one scientist said.
May 29, 2025
Thawing permafrost exacerbated by human-caused global heating is the likely culprit behind a massive glacier collapse that buried nearly the entire Swiss town of Blatten, one scientist said Thursday while warning of the likelihood of similar disasters in the future.
The alpine hamlet of 300 inhabitants—who were evacuated earlier amid warning signs of disaster—was almost completely wiped out on Wednesday after the Birch Glacier, located in the Lötschental Valley in northern Switzerland, collapsed. The glacial avalanche, laden with boulders and other debris, cascaded down the mountainside and into the village, obliterating everything in its path. Local officials said around 90% of Blatten was buried.
"We've lost our village," Blatten Mayor Matthias Bellwald told reporters. "The village is under rubble. We will rebuild."
before and after today’s glacier collapse that buried 90% of blatten, switzerland
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— ian bremmer ( @ianbremmer.com) May 28, 2025 at 3:01 PM
While there are no verified casualties from the disaster, one 64-year-old man has been reported missing.
Mathieu Morlighem, a glaciologist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, told ABC News that permafrost thaw under and along the sidewalls surrounding the glacier likely caused the collapse.
"What happened to Birch Glacier is what we would expect from rising temperatures in the Alps and elsewhere," he explained. "I think we can expect more events like this in the future."
As ABC News reported:
Glaciers in Switzerland have lost almost 40% of their volume since 2000, and the loss is accelerating, according to the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research. Record-high summer temperatures in 2022 and 2023 caused a 10% glacial ice loss in the country.
Experts warn that Switzerland's glaciers could disappear completely by 2100 due to the climate emergency.
As Common Dreams reported in March, the crisis is planetary and is predicted to adversely affect nearly 2 billion people who depend upon glaciers for agricultural irrigation and drinking water.
"Most of the world's glaciers, including those in mountains, are melting at an accelerated rate worldwide," a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization report published earlier this year warned. "Combined with accelerating permafrost thaw, declining snow cover, and more erratic snowfall patterns... this will have significant and irreversible impacts on local, regional, and global hydrology, including water availability."
The Swiss collapse happened a day before Thursday's opening of the
High-Level International Conference on Glaciers' Preservation in Tajikistan, which aims to "highlight the vital role of glaciers in maintaining global ecological balance and addressing water-related challenges."
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German Court Tosses Farmer's Case But Climate Groups Cheer 'Remarkable Precedent'
"This historic judgment lays the next building block in corporate climate accountability," said Jasper Tuelings of the Climate Litigation Network.
May 28, 2025
After a decade of legal proceedings, a German court on Wednesday dismissed a Peruvian farmer's case against energy giant RWE, but both he and green groups still hailed what they called a "landmark ruling" that launched a "new era of accountability" by "setting a powerful precedent."
The farmer, 44-year-old Saúl Luciano Lliuya, grows barley, corn, potatoes, and wheat outside Huaraz, Peru. In 2015, he sued RWE—one of Europe's biggest climate polluters—in Essen, Germany, where the company is headquartered. Although the German utility doesn't operate in Luciano Lliuya's country, he argued that its emissions contributed to the melting of Andean glaciers.
"He said that as a result, Lake Palcacocha—which is located above the city—now has four times as much water than in 2003 and that residents like him were at risk of flooding, especially if blocks of ice were to break off from Palcacocha glacier and fall into the lake, causing it to overflow," according to the BBC. The farmer sought around €17,000, or $19,000, from RWE toward a $3.5 million project to protect Huaraz.
As Reuters reported Wednesday:
Presiding judge Rolf Meyer, at the court in the western city of Hamm, said experts' estimate of the 30-year damage risk to the plaintiff's house of 1% was not enough to take the case further.
Had there been a larger adverse effect, a polluter could have been made to slash emissions or pay damages, Meyer said.
Meyer said the plaintiff's case was argued coherently and that it was "like a microcosm of the world's problems between people of the southern and the northern hemisphere, between the poor and the rich."
"Today the mountains have won," Luciano Lliuya said in a Wednesday statement. "Even if my case doesn't go any further, it has reached an important milestone, and that makes me proud. This ruling shows that the big polluters driving the climate can finally be held legally responsible for the harm they have caused."
"I am, of course, disappointed that the court reached a different conclusion from the glacier scientists who have studied this region for decades and believe my home is at risk," he continued. "We won't receive support from RWE to protect us from the flood risk. But this case was never just about me. It was about all the people who, like us in Huaraz, are already living with the consequences of a crisis we did not create. This ruling opens the door for others to demand justice."
The farmer's lawyer, Roda Verheyen, also framed the decision as a major step forward, saying that "today's ruling is a milestone and will give a tailwind to climate lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, and thus to the move away from fossil fuels worldwide. The plaintiff is grateful to the German courts for the seriousness with which his case was treated."
Other advocates and experts similarly weighed in. Ecojustice climate director Charlie Hatt declared that "this is a historic moment for climate litigation," while University of Oxford professor Thom Wetzer said that "this decadelong case has borne fruit," setting "a remarkable precedent that could enable future cases."
Jasper Tuelings, a strategic adviser with Climate Litigation Network, said that "this historic judgment lays the next building block in corporate climate accountability. Last year's Shell ruling showed us that big polluters have a legal obligation to reduce their future emissions in line with the Paris agreement—today's ruling affirms that these companies can be held accountable for their past emissions too."
The era of major polluters not having to pay for the environmental harms they cause is over. The case between Saul, a Peruvian farmer, and RWE, an energy giant, has shifted the landscape of climate justice. There are over 40 similar ongoing cases. Accountability is coming #SaulvsRWE
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— Friends of the Earth International (@foeint.bsky.social) May 28, 2025 at 8:10 AM
RWE, meanwhile, said in a statement that "the decision of the Hamm Higher Regional Court means that the attempt, supported by German NGOs, to use Mr Luciano Lliuya's lawsuit to create a precedent for holding individual companies responsible for the effects of climate change worldwide under German law has failed."
"RWE has always considered such civil 'climate liability' to be inadmissible under German law," RWE added, warning of "unforeseeable consequences for Germany as an industrial location," and noting that "other German courts have dismissed similar climate lawsuits—for example against Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW."
Despite the company's comments, climate advocates appeared undeterred. Sebastien Duyck, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, said that "Saul's breakthrough opens up a well of opportunities for the more than 40 similar cases ongoing. It makes it more likely that those living at the sharp edge of climate change, such as Saul and his community, can succeed in holding heavy emitters to account for the damage they cause."
Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, highlighted how science has evolved since Luciano Lliuya's case began a decade ago, which could impact ongoing and future legal proceedings.
"The science is absolutely clear... Human-induced climate change is already affecting weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe," Otto said, citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "This includes Saul's city of Huaraz and RWE contributed without any doubt to climate change."
"The precedent that this case has set underlines just how important scientific evidence is in the global fight against climate change," Otto added. "Since the case was filed 10 years ago, scientists have developed a large body of evidence showing how much companies and states can be held responsible for climate disasters. This is therefore a landmark moment for climate justice, ensuring that communities living in constant danger can hold carbon majors to account."
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Scientists Warn Major Glaciers Won't 'Survive This Century,' With Grave Impacts for Billions
"Preservation of glaciers is not just an environmental, economic, and societal necessity," said one expert. "It's a matter of survival."
Mar 21, 2025
Scientists on Friday spent the United Nations' World Water Day and first-ever World Day for Glaciers warning about how fossil fuel-driven global warming melts ice across the planet, endangering freshwater resources and causing seas to rise, with implications for ecosystems, economies, and billions of people.
In a Friday statement, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo pointed to a publication that the U.N. agency released earlier this week: "WMO's State of the Global Climate 2024 report confirmed that from 2022-224, we saw the largest three-year loss of glaciers on record."
"Seven of the 10 most negative mass balance years have occurred since 2016," Saulo continued. "Preservation of glaciers is not just an environmental, economic, and societal necessity. It's a matter of survival."
The WMO report was followed by the Friday launch of a 174-page document from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that stresses how "billions of people depend on the fresh water that flows from increasingly fragile mountain environments."
"As the water towers of the world, mountains are an essential source of fresh water for (irrigated) agriculture, power generation, industry, and large and growing populations—in the mountains and also downstream," the report details. "Generally, due to higher precipitation and lower evaporation, mountains supply more surface runoff per unit area than lowlands, providing 55-60% of global annual freshwater flows."
The document, The United Nations World Water Development Report 2025—Mountains and glaciers: Water towers, notes that "major cities that have been critically dependent on mountain waters include Addis Ababa, Barcelona, Bogotá, Jakarta, Kathmandu, La Paz, Lima, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Mexico City, New Delhi, New York, Quito, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo."
"Globally, up to two-thirds of irrigated agriculture may depend on mountain waters," the report states, "while the number of people in lowlands that strongly depend on water from mountains increased worldwide from around 0.6 billion in the 1960s to some 1.8 billion in the 2000s. An additional 1 billion people in the lowlands benefit from supportive mountain runoff contributions."
"Most of the world's glaciers, including those in mountains, are melting at an accelerated rate worldwide," the publication adds. "Combined with accelerating permafrost thaw, declining snow cover, and more erratic snowfall patterns... this will have significant and irreversible impacts on local, regional, and global hydrology, including water availability."
“The 21st of March 2025 is being celebrated as the first-ever World Day for Glaciers. ‘Celebrate’? Yes, we should celebrate glaciers and their crucial role in sustaining life on Earth for future generations,” says @iceblogger.bsky.social. Great stats here on the importance of glaciers 🧊
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— Covering Climate Now (@coveringclimatenow.org) March 21, 2025 at 8:31 AM
The UNESCO publication follows the international Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (GlaMBIE) team's study, published in the journal Nature last month, showing that glaciers have lost an average of 273 billion metric tons of ice annually since 2000.
That figure "amounts to what the entire global population consumes in 30 years, assuming three liters per person and day," Michael Zemp, a professor at Switzerland's University of Zurich and director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service who co-led the GlaMBIE study, explained at the time.
Zemp pointed to that finding and others on Friday, noting that from 2000-23, glacier melt caused global seas to rise 18 mm or about 0.7 inches. He said, "This might not sound much, but it has a big impact: Every millimeter [of] sea-level rise exposes an additional 200,000 to 300,000 people to annual flooding."
In a U.N. video, experts also highlighted parts of the globe that are particularly impacted by melting glaciers. Zemp explained that in "the European Alps, we are one of the regions that is most affected by climate change. Warming is about double the global average, and indeed, glaciers in the Alps are one of the most suffering around the world."
"We have lost, since 2000, almost 40% of the remaining ice. And that means under current melt rates, glaciers will not survive this century in the Alps," he warned.
Today is the first-ever #WorldGlaciersDay! Glaciers provide water for millions of people, regulate sea levels, and support biodiversity. Yet glaciers are disappearing at an alarming rate. #ClimateAction is key to protecting them & supporting those who rely on glaciers. www.un.org/en/observanc...
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— IngerAndersen.bsky.social (@ingerandersen.bsky.social) March 21, 2025 at 9:57 AM
Scientists are also concerned about the Hindu Kush in the Himalayas, which are often called the "third pole because they hold a lot of water resources," WMO's Sulagna Mishra said in the video. "Here, more than 120 million farmers in the downstream areas are impacted directly because of the melting of the glaciers."
"So, when there are a lot of floods, for example, happening because of melting of glaciers, the livelihoods are changed, people tend to migrate from one place to another," she continued. "So when you ask me how many people are actually impacted, it's really everyone."
As Carbon Brief reported Friday:
Dr. Aditi Mukherji—the director of the climate change, adaptation, and mitigation impact action platform of the CGIAR—tells Carbon Brief that the report is an important call for more "adaptation efforts and funding."
She says that mountain-dwelling communities are "already quite vulnerable due to their remote location and other developmental deficits" and are "increasingly losing their way of life due to no fault of theirs."
However, in some parts of the world, especially the United States, such calls face the pro-fossil fuel agenda of polluting companies and right-wing policymakers that are working to quash the movement for a just transition to clean energy by any means necessary.
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