Pennine Alps glacier retreat

This animation uses two false-colour images from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, acquired on 23 August 2016 and 23 August 2026, to highlight the loss of glacier ice in the Pennine Alps of Switzerland over the past decade.

Captured exactly 10 years apart, the images make the changes in glacier extent clearly visible. Glacier ice appears in electric blue, while lakes are shown in a deeper blue. Because both images were acquired in August, the blue areas represent ice rather than snow, which can be more difficult to distinguish in Sentinel-2 imagery captured during the winter months.