See photos of a Swiss glacier melting in the heat of climate change

Drip, drip. Trickle, trickle. That's the sound of water seeping from a sunbaked and slushy Swiss glacier that geoscientists are monitoring for signs of continued retreat by the majestic masses of ice under the heat of global warming. In recent years, glaciologists like Matthias Huss of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, known as ETHZ, and others have turned to dramatic measures to help protect glaciers like the Rhone Glacier, which feeds into the river of the same name that runs through Switzerland and France. One of those desperate steps involves using giant sheets to cover the ice like blankets to slow the melt. Switzerland is continental Europe’s glacier capital, with some 1,400 that provide drinking water, irrigation for farmland in many parts of Europe including French wine country, and hydropower that generates most of the country’s electricity. The number has been dwindling. The Alpine country has already lost up to 1,000 small glaciers, and the bigger ones...