This is how fast Swiss glaciers, the 'water tower of Europe,' are melting away

Glaciers in Switzerland lost 5.5 per cent of their ice volume this year, the second-biggest percentage drop on record. It's part of a trend that could have big impacts in a country reliant on hydropower and which acts as the 'water tower of Europe,' feeding its major rivers.

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Tourists gather at the glacier-feed Oeschinensee lake near Kandersteg, Switzerland, on Aug. 4. The country's glacier-monitoring service says Switzerland lost the second-highest percentage of glacier ice on record this year. (Hernan Munoz/The Associated Press)

Glaciers in Switzerland — the home to the most in the Alps — lost 5.5 per cent of their ice volume this year, the second-biggest percentage drop on record due to heat waves and low winter snowfall, experts report.

"Alpine glaciers have no chance of surviving in the long term under such conditions," the GLAMOS Swiss glacier monitoring service and Swiss Academy of Sciences said in a statement Thursday.

The trend has worsened in recent years. Over the past five years alone, the volume of ice in Switzerland has declined by nearly a fifth, the experts say.

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