Switzerland's glaciers have faced “enormous” melting this year with a 3% drop in total volume — the fourth-largest annual drop on record — due to the effects of global warming, top Swiss glaciologists reported on Wednesday.

The Glamos monitoring network and the Swiss Academy of Sciences say the shrinkage this year means ice mass in Switzerland — home to the most glaciers in Europe — has declined by one-quarter over the last decade.

Matthias Huss, a glaciologist, called it an "extreme ice loss."

"Since the year of 2015, in 10 years, we have lost one quarter of the total ice volume. This is more than ever."

Switzerland is home to nearly 1,400 glaciers, the most of any country in Europe, and the ice mass and its gradual melting have implications for hydropower, tourism, farming and water resources in many European countries.

More than 1,000 small glaciers in Switzerland have already disappeared, the experts said.

The teams reported that a winter with little snow was followed by heat waves in June — the second-warmest June on record — which left the snow reserves depleted by early July.

Ice masses began to melt earlier than ever, they said.

The shrinkage is the fourth-largest after those in 2022, 2023 and back in 2003.

The retreat and loss of glaciers is also having an impact on Switzerland's landscape, causing mountains to shift and ground to become unstable.

“Glaciers in the mountain regions in general are really important to Europe for economy, ecology and hydrology," Huss, the glaciologist, said.

"Also natural hazards change, as we have impressively seen with the disaster in Blatten."

Swiss authorities have been on heightened alert for such changes after a huge mass of rock and ice from a glacier thundered down a mountainside that covered nearly all of the southern village of Blatten in May.