It sounds like winning the lottery, and that is exactly how those involved describe it: in June 2025, a tree was found at the retreating glacier tongue of the Morteratsch Glacier in the Engadin (Switzerland) – not just any piece of driftwood, but a tree that had grown exactly where ice lies today. Under the leadership of the renowned geologist Professor Christian Schlüchter, the tree stump – after being uncovered by a small group using spades and a lot of hard work – was extracted from the rock by professionals and flown out by helicopter. The results of the investigation are now available and have been published.

Dating the tree – by counting the annual rings and verifying them with radiocarbon dating – revealed that this larch began to grow over 10,000 years ago. To be more precise, this was when the glaciers of the last great Ice Age had long since receded, and a warm climate had turned the Alps green right up to high altitudes.

Climate change back and forth

The story this tree tells is one of constant, rapid fluctuations:

1. Last Ice Age (Glacial) – the Alps beneath kilometre-thick ice sheets.
2. Transition to the Warm Period (Interglacial) – the glaciers melted down to a minimum, and the intra-Alpine valleys were literally ‘flushed clean’.
3. Younger Dryas – then came another brutal cold spell. The glaciers reformed and advanced far, reaching as far as beyond Pontresina.
4. Another retreat – afterwards, this entire ice sheet melted away again within a few centuries, giving way to a warm climate.
5.  ‘Our tree’ is growing – right in the midst of this green, ice-free phase.
6. Another glacial advance – the tree is run over, toppled and buried under ice for millennia.
7. Little Ice Age – the Morteratsch reaches its peak in 1857.
8. Today – the glacier is retreating and, after more than 10,000 years, is revealing the tree once more.

The equilibrium line – the boundary between a glacier’s accumulation zone and ablation zone – lay at an altitude of around 1,000 metres during the last Ice Age. Today it lies at around 4,000 metres. The tree, however, grew at a time when the climate was comparable to today’s – perhaps even slightly warmer, as the equilibrium line must have been significantly higher for the tree to have grown to this size.

“Geologically normal”

When asked whether today’s warming is something out of the ordinary in the context of climate history, Schlüchter replies in conversation with weather expert Kai Zorn (YouTube-link to 30 minute video):

“It’s certain that, when you look at these findings … this falls within that range. We haven’t yet gone beyond the range seen in recent years.”

And his colleague, the geologist Christoph Korte, sums it up:

“There are warmer and colder periods, and they are simply geologically normal.”

Schlüchter adds what nature’s real message is:

“Advances, melting, retreat – these are phenomena that happen extremely quickly, so quickly that humans haven’t really noticed them until now. This happens rapidly in both directions.”

In other words: today’s melting is nothing that hasn’t already occurred in the Earth’s recent history – and it will swing back in the opposite direction just as quickly. The Alpine legends of the ‘Sennentuntschi’ of the Blümlisalp or of ‘Ötzi’, in which the glacier sweeps over flowering alpine pastures overnight, are not fairy tales, but collective memories of precisely such tipping-point effects.

The discoveries are mounting

The Morteratsch tree is not an isolated case. As early as 2024, TKP reported on a similar tree discovery at the Pasterze on the Großglockner, which shows that Alpine glaciers are currently larger than they have generally been over the last 10,000 years:

• Gletscher in den Alpen derzeit größer als meist in letzten 10.000 Jahren

And as far back as 2005, Der Spiegel (which at that time was still practising journalism rather than merely spreading propaganda as it does today) reported on the Tschierva Glacier – another discovery proving that around 7,000 years ago, vegetation in the Alps extended significantly further up the slopes than it does today. TKP has documented here how these findings are systematically suppressed in official climate journalism:

• Klimajournalismus-Kodex: Hände falten, Goschn halten

The message is the same everywhere, and it does not fit the narrative of an “unprecedented, man-made climate catastrophe”.

Links to other previous TKP articles on this topic can be found below (in German):

ORF Nachrichten: CO2 erwärmt – Gletscher schmilzt – Vulkan bricht aus

Deutschland unter 1 Kilometer Eis: Was die Landschaft über Klimageschichte verrät

Neue Studie: Wichtiger Hochpunkt des Grönlandeisschilds verschwand komplett vor nur 7000 Jahren