Switzerland Today

Greetings from Zurich!

Switzerland, like all other parts of the world, is feeling the heat during El Niño year.

More on that later, but first the news of the day.

© Keystone / Gian Ehrenzeller

In the news: Chinese tourists, Balkans stability and a landslide bridge.

• The army has built a bridge in Schwanden, canton Glarus, to allow clearance vehicles access to a landslide site.
• Swiss President Alain Berset has spoken of the need for stability in the Balkans at a meeting of the European Political Community (EPC) in Granada, Spain.
• The number of visitors from China is not expected to fully recover until 2026, says Switzerland Tourism.
• The Catholic Church in Switzerland is losing hundreds of members in the wake of the sex abuse scandal.

Keystone / Steve Markham

Never-ending summer

The month of September broke all temperature records across the globe, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Last month saw temperatures 0.93 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1991-2000 average, and 0.5C warmer than the previous record set in 2020.

The El Niño year saw a temperature excess of 3.9C in Switzerland in September, as we have already reported.

Temperature records have also been smashed on several days this month, reports MeteoSwiss.

Dry winters and hot summers have seen Swiss glaciers lose 10% of their volume in the last two years.

Swiss glaciologist Matthias Huss explains that temperature rises are magnified in Switzerland due to local conditions.

“Switzerland is situated too far away from the oceans to benefit from their dampening effect on temperatures,” he told SWI swissinfo.ch.

“The loss of snow cover on mountains also amplifies the increase in temperatures because snow reflects radiation back into the atmosphere.”