They look like feathers blown wild by the scant air of a scorching late summer. They are seeds, tiny black specks wrapped in silky threads, spilling from the cylindrical pods of fireweed.

They are a sign of a world that did not exist at 8,200 feet. The flowers, once as tall as a person, have surrendered their brilliant pink and lilac hues with the changing season. Until just a few years ago, they did not grow above 6,600 feet. Then the climate went haywire, just like the flight of their seeds.

The disappearance of glacier tongues is far more obvious, a stark marker of a blistering summer. What is gone is striking. But what was not there before and has now climbed higher is evidence of a “new world” emerging amid something as ancient as the Alps.

It is an unexpected environment that leads Claudio Smiraglia, an internationally renowned glaciologist, to say: “It’s time to explore again.”

Even imposing animals such as ibex are showing signs of profound exhaustion. They graze at night to escape the heat.

The unexpected sights: mountains stripped bare and washed out, glaciers cut in half and broken apart.

Temperatures are changing the habits of plants and animals. Andrea Mainetti, a botanist who tends the Paradisia Alpine Botanical Garden in Cogne, in Gran Paradiso National Park, says: “Fireweed is a plant that loves sun and dry weather. It is moving to unusual elevations, yet there is still no scientific study documenting this phenomenon.”

Where the ice retreats, moraines are becoming home to flowers and plants. “Until now, these were highly selective environments, home to genepy and a few other pioneer plants. Now, with snow arriving later and disappearing earlier, plants such as wild thyme and yarrow are taking hold. Then there are even ferns, young larches and dwarf willows.”

But look up toward the mountains and climate change reads like an open book: Glaciers are barely recognizable, gray and fragmented. There is no place in the Alps that looks as it did even a few years ago.

Glaciologists at the University of Zurich have done the math. From 1980 to 2025, Alpine glaciers lost more than half their volume on average, shrinking from 80 cubic kilometers to 45. The Aletsch, the largest glacier in the Alps, lost six meters of thickness this year.

The reference stakes installed by glaciologist Matthias Huss look like Rangers, puts it bluntly: “We’re like the orchestra on the Titanic.”

The last to abandon the sinking ship, witnesses to a world melting away.

What the Swiss have already documented also applies on the other side of the Alps. Fabrizio Troilo, a glaciologist with the Safe Mountain Foundation in Courmayeur, says: “The glaciers are suffering badly. But our Swiss colleagues have pointed to a surprise. Nothing positive, to be clear, but according to their calculations, this summer may not have melted as much ice as the disastrous summer of 2022.”

The hypothesis is based on the low humidity in the air — the dryness that, to some extent, spared the highest elevations.

Troilo will soon climb with colleagues to the 13,450-foot Whymper hanging glacier on the Grandes Jorasses in the Mont Blanc massif to check whether the probes driven 165 feet into the pristine ice, all the way to the bedrock, records temperatures of 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

It has happened before: a sign that, despite its altitude, the glacier has temperate zones — meaning it rests on water rather than ice.

The Alps have little time left to remain clad in white. Troilo says: “By the end of the century, if this continues, the ice will be found only above 13,100 feet.”

Smiraglia says: “I recently returned from Valtellina. The Forni Glacier, which I have studied for 50 years, has split into three, and its resilience has declined sharply. This year I saw an even more pronounced emergence of rock in the central section, the part visible from the Branca refuge.

“That means that section will split in two.”

The same situation can be seen in the ice of the Marmolada and in what little remains of the glaciers in the Julian Alps.

When glaciers split, it means they have separate lifespans — and therefore much shorter ones.

They are no longer being replenished. The mountain is now more fragile.

Monviso, the “Stone King” on the horizon above Turin, never dropped below freezing. Goodbye to permafrost, the deep layer of frozen ground that holds the rocks together.

Michele Freppaz, a professor at the University of Turin, says: “For days, the freezing level was above 16,400 feet. Who has ever seen a waterfall pouring down from the summit of the Matterhorn?

“In 1934, meteorologist Umberto Monterin said, ‘If you see rain in summer above 11,500 feet, make sure to record the time and location.’ An exceptional event that became commonplace this summer.

“And rain contributes to the degradation of permafrost.”