GENEVA: Switzerland’s glaciers have faced “enormous” melting this year with a 3 percent drop in total volume — the fourth-largest annual drop on record — due to the effects of global warming, top Swiss glaciologists reported Wednesday.
The shrinkage this year means that ice mass in Switzerland — home to the most glaciers in Europe — has declined by one-quarter over the last decade, the Swiss glacier monitoring group GLAMOS and the Swiss Academy of Sciences said in their report.
“Glacial melting in Switzerland was once again enormous in 2025,” the scientists said. “A winter with low snow depth combined with heat waves in June and August led to a loss of 3 percent of the glacier volume.”
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.
“Glaciers are clearly retreating because of anthropogenic global warming,” said Matthias Huss, the head of GLAMOS, referring to climate change caused by human activity.
“This is the main cause for the acceleration we are seeing in the last two years,” added Huss, who is also a glaciologist at Zurich’s ETHZ university.
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.
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.
Swiss glaciers shrank 3% this year, the fourth-biggest retreat on record
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Swiss glaciers shrank 3% this year, the fourth-biggest retreat on record
- The shrinkage this year means that ice mass in Switzerland – home to the most glaciers in Europe – has declined by one-quarter over the last decade
KFC readies finger-licking Japanese Christmas
- The first KFC Christmas campaign was in 1974 and there are different theories about the origins
TOKYO: KFC in Japan is gearing up for the Christmas tradition of millions of families thronging the US fast-food chain for special festive buckets of deep-fried chicken and other treats.
“Reservations for KFC Christmas typically begin around the beginning of November,” Takuma Kawamura, a KFC marketing manager, told AFP at a new upmarket pop-up eatery in Tokyo.
“From that time, stores with the Col. statue will dress him in Christmas attire,” he said, referring to KFC’s late founder Col. Sanders, a widely recognized figure in Japan.
Japan has a tiny Christian majority and Christmas is a secular festival of full-bore consumerism complete with Santa, gifts and streetlights. Couples often go on dates on Christmas Eve.
For food, families often gorge themselves on special “Party Barrels” bursting with chicken, an array of side dishes and a dessert — such as ice cream or cheesecake — stored at the bottom in a separate compartment.
December 24 — Christmas Eve — is KFC Japan’s busiest day by far, with 10 times more customers than normal, the firm said in 2020. Reportedly 3.6 million families make orders.
The first KFC Christmas campaign was in 1974 and there are different theories about the origins.
These include that Takeshi Okawara, the manager of Japan’s first KFC outlet, overheard foreigners pining for turkey, which is often eaten at Christmas in Britain and the United States.
Col. Sanders, who died in 1980, has also entered into baseball folklore in Japan.
Hanshin Tigers supporters threw a plastic statue of the Col. from a KFC restaurant into a river in Osaka in 1985 on their way to winning Japan’s version of the World Series.
This was because fans — many of whom also jumped in the dirty Dotonbori waterway — thought the statue resembled Randy Bass, an American member of the team at the time.
But the dunking spawned the legend of the “Curse of the Colonel” that said the Tigers would never win another title until the effigy was recovered.
The sludge-covered statue was dredged out in 2009, cleaned up and put on display, but it took until 2023 for the Tigers finally to win the championship again.
The plastic Col. was finally disposed of last year following a ritual at a temple attended by KFC’s Japan president, who offered sake and fried chicken.
