Glaciolog David Volken at the mouth of the Rhone Glacier.<br /> Huge sheets with fleece blankets that cover an ice tunnel at the mouth of the Rhone Glacier in Switzerland. After a winter with record amounts of snow, most of it was gone when this imae was taken on July 14th 2018, exposing the darker ice. While snow is a brilliant reflector of the energy from the sun, the darker ice absorbs the energy instead, accelerating the melting of the glacier. The color and darkness of glacier ice vary all over the world, depending on build-up of pollution, age of the ice, particles picked up by the ice and by microorganisms in the ice. The glacier ice is however rarely white as snow. With shorter winters and vanishing snow cover, the melting of the glaciers is accelerating.<br /> The Rhone Glacier now melts more than 70 centimeters in thickness every week during the summer months. Between 1996 and 2006, an estimated 0.9 billion cubic metres of water melted yearly from the Swiss glaciers. That number is likely much higher today. Switzerland just had the hottest July since 1921, and the rivers are running at record low levels.<br /> The ice tunnel is a popular tourist attraction, and has been a steady income source for the Carlen family who runs and maintain the ice tunnel. The fleece blankets help slow down the melting. While tourists always have flocked to the Rhone Glacier due to it's easy access from the nearby Furka Pass, today's tourism is often visitors who are concerned about the effects of climate change.
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