How the Rhône glacier retreated over 15 years (Picture: Duncan Porter)
A tourist who returned to a Swiss glacier with his wife to recreate a treasured photo from 15 years ago was devastated by what he found.
In a photo taken in August 2009, Duncan and Helen Porter pose right next to the ice, with a blanket of white stretching behind them.
But in a photo captured in August 2024, part of the glacier has become a lake, and there is more bare rock than snow.
Duncan shared the ‘before and after’ photos of the Rhone Glacier on X, saying: ‘Not gonna lie, it made me cry.’
In recent years, the famous glacier has regularly been covered with white tarpaulins to try to slow down the rate it is melting.
Duncan’s post went viral, with many expressing their sadness – but also many climate deniers claiming this was just natural variation.
Acknowledging that glacier volume did shrink and grow, Duncan said this was supposed to happen over very long time periods, rather than something so dramatic in such a short time.
Some claimed that the angle of the glacier was not exactly the same, to which he responded: ‘We’re on holiday. It was never intended to be a bloody study. It’s obvious enough from the photo, if you have half a functioning brain.’
Software developer Duncan drove a campervan back to Switzerland with his wife and teenage daughters Maisie and Emily, as the first photo had been hanging in his kitchen and he wanted to show them a place that meant a lot to him, he told the Guardian.
‘But obviously the circumstance of this photo was drastically different,’ he said.
Fact check: Are our glaciers really melting due to climate change?
The retreat of the Alps’ glaciers has been well documented. More than 500 glaciers have already vanished from Switzerland and the government has warned that the remaining 1,500 will be gone by the end of the century if emissions are not curbed.
It has led to so-called ‘last chance’ tourism, where visitors flock to see such natural wonders while they still can.
Yes, there has always been natural variation in the size of these frozen rivers.
But Switzerland’s glaciers suffered their second worst melt rate in 2023 after record 2022 losses, shrinking their overall volume by 10% in the last two years, monitoring body GLAMOS said last September.
The ‘catastrophic’ figures meant they lost as much ice in two years as in the three decades before 1990.
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