Alpine Foundations Crumbling: Swiss Permafrost Hits Alarming All-Time Heat Record

While the Swiss Alps have stood firm for millennia, their rocky foundations are starting to melt away. Switzerland’s permafrost just hit its highest temperature ever recorded in 2024, and that’s not exactly cause for celebration. The frozen soil that acts like glue for mountain slopes is thawing faster than a popsicle in July.

The Permos network, which monitors 23 sites across Switzerland, dropped some sobering numbers. Permafrost temperatures at 10-meter depth have climbed 0.8°C over the past decade. That might not sound like much, but when your job is staying frozen, any warming is bad news. About 5% of Switzerland sits on permafrost, mostly above 2,500 meters where things are supposed to stay cold. Since 2000, the ground ice content in these frozen layers has plummeted dramatically.

Here’s the surprise: you can’t even see permafrost. It’s hiding underground, quietly holding rocks and sediment together. Or at least it was. Now it’s turning into mush, and mountains are literally falling apart. The Blatten village and Birch glacier collapses weren’t just random events. They’re what happens when nature’s cement mixer stops working.

Mountains are literally falling apart when nature’s cement mixer stops working.

Climate change is the obvious culprit, but there’s a twist. Early snowfall in autumn 2023 actually made things worse. Snow acts like a blanket, trapping heat in the ground. Great for keeping warm in bed, terrible for permafrost trying to stay frozen. Every monitoring site across the Swiss Alps showed rapid warming. No exceptions.

The domino effect is brutal. Thawing permafrost destabilizes slopes, triggering rockfalls and landslides. Exposed bedrock deteriorates faster. Glaciers, already down 50% since 1950, are disintegrating even quicker. Swiss glaciers lost 10% of their ice volume in just two years. That’s not melting—that’s vanishing.

Mountain villages, roads, railways, and hydroelectric plants are all in the danger zone. More than one-third of mountain huts from the Swiss Alpine Club may become structurally unsound. Tourism routes that existed for generations are crumbling. Insurance companies are sweating bullets. Local economies built on mountaineering are watching their foundations—literally—disappear.

The feedback loop is particularly nasty. Melting permafrost releases stored carbon, warming the atmosphere, melting more permafrost. It’s climate change’s version of a perpetual motion machine, except this one actually works. And nobody’s happy about it.