Around 250,000 cubic metres of ice may be about to break away from the Planpincieux glacier, on the Grandes Jorasses mountain of the Mont Blanc massif, officials said.
“These phenomena once again show how the mountain is going through a period of major change due to climate factors and, therefore, it is particularly vulnerable,” the mayor of nearby Courmayeur, Stefano Miserocchi, said.
Miserocchi ordered the closure of roads in Val Ferret after experts warned that the glacier's movement had accelerated 50 to 60 centimetres per day.
He said there was no threat to residential areas or tourist resorts, but “unoccupied mountain huts” in the area were being evacuated as a precaution.
Experts at the Fondazione Montagna Sicura (Safe Mountain Foundation), who have been monitoring the glacier for the Val d’Aosta region since 2013, alerted local officials to the latest developments.
“This glacier is atypical because it’s temperate, and so is influenced by the temperature of the water flowing below, which particularly exposes it to the global warming in progress,” the foundation’s secretary-general, Jean Pierre Fosson, said.
But Fosson stressed that the preventive measures taken so far were for an “unprecedented situation” for a glacier in the region.
He added that while the glacier may break off in a single block, it could just crumble away or not break away at all.
Experts say rapidly retreatnig glaciers, an important source of fresh water, are among the many symptoms of the man-made climate crisis.
