The first World Glacier Day
On March 21, 2025, the first “World Glacier Day” proclaimed by the United Nations took place. It aims to raise public awareness of the current decline in glaciers and its consequences, such as water shortage or elevation of sea level. The accelerated melting of glaciers threatens to cause an avalanche of cascade effects on the economy, ecosystems and the population, not only in mountainous regions, but also in the downstream plains as well as the global scale.
The melting of the glaciers illustrates one of the direct consequences of the evolution of the climate and they are therefore considered to be the “thermometer” of the earth. In a mountainous region such as Switzerland, glaciers and their evolution are naturally important for climate observation and are among the essential climatic variables which are permanently monitored, treated and made available to the public within the framework of the Swiss climate observation system (Swiss GCOS).
The Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) is a program with the aim of making high -quality climate observations from all over the world accessible to all interested users. GCOS Switzerland implements this global program at the national level. It builds on the work of 29 partner organizations and is coordinated by the Swiss GAW/GCOS Office at Meteoschweiz.
The global climate observation system (Global Climate Observing System – GCOS) is a program that aims to provide all interested users with high -quality climatic observations from the whole world. GCOS Switzerland implements this global program at the national level. It relies on the work of 29 partner organizations and is coordinated by the Swiss Gaw/Gcos Office de Météosuisse. As part of the GCOS Switzerland, Météosuisse notably supports the Swiss Glamos glacier measurement network, which systematically documents and observes the long -term changes in glaciers in the Swiss Alps, as well as the international glacier data service, the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS), which compiles and provides the observations of glaciers from measurements remote sensing.
