Mont Blanc, the ‘roof of Europe’, loses more than a metre of height in a year

Peak of French mountain now 4,807 metres high and fluctuates year by year due to changes in Alpine climate

Europe’s highest mountain shrank by more than a metre last year. The peak of Mont Blanc in France now stands 4,807.47 metres above sea level, a team of surveyors said on Wednesday, putting “the roof of Europe” 1.29 metres lower than in 2025.

The mountain is about 4,792 metres tall but the summit constantly shifts as heat, wind and precipitation change the thickness of snow and ice on top. The height scientists recorded during an expedition last month was 1.88 metres greater than it was in 2023, when it reached the lowest levels in recent memory.

Chartered surveyors from the Union Nationale des Géomètres-Experts (UNGE) and the Ordre des Géomètres-Experts, who have regularly monitored the peak since 2001, used precise satellite technology to measure the mountain, and drones to create a detailed model of the snow and ice cap.

The summit has shrunk back by 3.43 metres since a high of 4,810.90 metres in 2007, the data shows.

The experts cautioned against linking fluctuations in height from year to year to the rapid loss of Alpine ice being caused by fossil fuel pollution.

“Regarding ice mass, it is essential to distinguish between changes in surface altitude and changes in the total volume or mass of ice,” a UNGE spokesperson said. “An increase in summit altitude does not necessarily mean that the mountain has gained ice mass, nor does it contradict the documented retreat of Alpine glaciers.”

Climate breakdown was a factor in western Europe’s hottest summer on record this year, scarring Alpine regions and melting ice at dizzying speed. Earlier this month, Swiss glaciologists warned of an “ explosion of melt rates ” after confirming that one-fifth of the country’s ice had been lost in the past five years, and 5.5% of volume was lost between 2025 and 2026.

Jean des Garets, the president of the Haute-Savoie departmental chamber of surveyors and the leader of the Mont Blanc expedition, said the warming trend could be seen with the naked eye in the rest of the Alpine massif but that “for the moment, climate change doesn’t seem to have the same impact above 4,000 metres”.

“When we climb, we pass by the Brigade Blanche hut before the Tête-Rousse glacier,” he said in comments reported by the French television channel TF1 on Wednesday. “We’ve seen that the glacier has moved up. It has literally melted before our very eyes and now in some places we’re crossing a stream instead of a glacier.”

Fuente: The Guardian World