Sources

Which glaciers. Every glacier of the 2016 inventory (1,400) is in the atlas and on the maps. Glaciers of 0.1 km² or more, and smaller ones with long measurement records, have their own page (690).

Past extents. Each 2016 glacier is linked to the older inventory polygons with the same id, or else to the polygon it overlaps most. Where the older polygon also contains other of today’s glaciers, the page says so: the ice has split since.

Projections. OGGM projections are keyed by RGI 6.0 ids. An RGI glacier is assigned to the 2016 glacier that contains its centroid (or the nearest within 300 m). Volumes are shown relative to each model’s own 2020 value, then the median over climate models; the band is the 17th–83rd percentile. 1,050 of 1,400 glaciers have a match; the others, mostly tiny, follow the median curve of glaciers of similar size on the maps.

Future maps. For each glacier, the projected area (relative to 2016) is removed from its lowest ice pixels upward, using swisstopo’s 10 m terrain model. This is an illustration of the projected area, not a modelled outline.

Meltwater. Runoff is the sum of OGGM’s ice melt, snowmelt and rain over the initial glacier area, as in the OGGM documentation.

Numbers that differ. The inventories, the GLAMOS annual updates and the models differ in method and date, so totals do not always match: for example 961 km² in the 2016 inventory, about 714 km² estimated for 2026. Each figure names its source.

Licences. GLAMOS data are free with attribution for scientific and non-commercial use. swisstopo data are open government data. The lakes dataset is CC BY 4.0.