The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: Swiss Glacier Collapse That Buried Village Likely a ‘Direct Result of Our Warming Climate’
Dear Diary. One major item that I did not touch on last week was the fact that a Swiss town got buried due to the collapse of a glacier nestled upon the Alps. According to some experts, this would not have happened without the globe warming due to our carbon pollution, which is inducing climate change.
Here are more details from Common Dreams:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/swiss-glacier-collapse
This May 29, 2025 aerial photograph shows the town of Blatten, in the Bietschhorn mountain of the Swiss Alps, destroyed by a landslide after part of the huge Birch Glacier collapsed and was swallowed up by the river Lonza the day before. (Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
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.”
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, toldABC 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.”
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Monday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)