Zermatt’s disappearing glaciers make climate change visible. Pay special attention on the water levels of the village river.

It’s been clear-skies for the past 7 days here in Zermatt, Switzerland.

Temperatures are around 25–28° C every afternoon, very unusual for this part of the country.

Not a single thunderstorm, and no rainfall whatsoever over the last 7 days.

Whilst these weather conditions might sound like perfect holiday conditions, think twice. Even though the conditions for a Matterhorn ascent are perfect right now, and you can enjoy your dinner on the terrace in shorts and a t-shirt, think of what these conditions do to the glaciers.

Glaciers are bell-weathers of climate change, as they are very delicate ecosystems.

A large part of the surroundings in Zermatt (still) consists of glaciers. The typical way people talk about glaciers and climate change is by comparing panorama photos from different years:

Gornergletscher and Grenzgletscher
Gornergletscher and Grenzgletscher, July 2022. They used to be connected, but that’s a thing of the past now.(source: author)

Of course, you can see how far up the glaciers reached in good old times, but it’s difficult to get an accurate year-on-year comparison — different snow levels, different perspectives, different weather conditions.

Let’s do something more tangible: All the water leaving the Mattertal Valley drains via the Vispa River — be it rain, snow melt, or glacier melt.

Map of the Mattertal
The Vispa River is the only river draining the Mattertal Valley (source: Swisstopo)

Normally during summer, you can see some rocks in the stream, and from the milky color of the water, you can see that the water stems from glacier melt rather than snowmelt.

Zermatt with the Vispa river and the Matterhorn
Normal summer water levels at Vispa River in August 2012 (source: Wikipedia)

Last Saturday at 7 am, the water level looked like this:

High water levels of the Vispa river
Vispa river water levels, 16th July 2022, 7 am (source: author)

And here is the frightening evidence from last Saturday at 5 pm:

High water levels of the Vispa river
Vispa river water levels, 16th July 2022, 5 pm (source: author)

Whilst you could still see a few rocks in the stream at 7 am, the river carried water just like after a thunderstorm at 5 pm. Remember, no thunderstorms last Saturday.

This torrent carries away cubic meters of glacier ice every second.

At the end of the day, it is physics — calculate the throughput per second, compare it to the total volume of all the glaciers in the valley, and you can calculate how many more hot days before the rest of the ice is carried away.

As an engineer, I’m certainly not an alarmist, but I admit seeing the Vispa River like this raised both my eyebrows and my alertness.