Bella-Tola Glacier appears to have disappeared

The Bella-Tola Glacier above Saint-Luc in the Valais region appears to have melted away, SRF reports, citing the newspaper Le Nouvelliste. Only a few snowfields reportedly remain at the glacier, which lies 3,025 metres above sea level.

Matthias Huss, a glaciologist and head of the Swiss glacier monitoring network GLAMOS, said he could not independently confirm the glacier’s disappearance. Images published in the media report also do not show this clearly. However, he said it was quite likely that the glacier had completely disappeared in recent days.

“The Bella-Tola Glacier has not been an active, healthy glacier for five years,” Huss said. According to the latest inventory from 2023, it covered an area equivalent to seven football fields.

Determining when a glacier has definitively disappeared is difficult, Huss said. As a glacier shrinks, it becomes covered by debris and rocks. Eventually, it becomes hard to distinguish remaining glacier ice from dead ice, which is detached from the active glacier, no longer connected to it and no longer moving.

A glacier measuring less than one hectare is no longer included in the inventory. Only the next glacier inventory, due in several years, will establish definitively whether Bella-Tola has disappeared.

Glaciers entered this summer in poor condition. Little snow covered them at the end of winter, while April was warm and dry. In some places, melting had already begun by then.

The record year for glacier melt so far was 2022, when more than 6 percent of Switzerland’s ice volume was lost, according to SCNAT. Huss said it was not yet possible to determine whether this year would surpass that record. The interim assessment for the glaciers this summer was clearly poor, he said.

“It is very likely that several dozen glaciers will disappear completely this summer,” Huss said. Which glaciers these will be is difficult to predict because local factors such as shade, avalanches and debris cover play a role. In general, the smallest glaciers disappear first, meaning glacier size is more important than location.

Bella-Tola is far from the first glacier to disappear. The death of the Pizol Glacier attracted considerable attention around seven years ago, when environmental organisations held a memorial ceremony.

About 1,000 glaciers have disappeared since 1970, according to Huss. Between 2016 and 2023 alone, 160 glaciers were lost. Many were small and some did not even have names. Bella-Tola was better known and was measured regularly, which is likely to draw more attention to its apparent disappearance.