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Latin
America's Glaciers Disappearing Fast
Gustavo
González
SANTIAGO, (Tierramérica) - Glaciers
around the world are disappearing more
quickly than initially thought, and
global warming is believed to be the
culprit. The deglaciation phenomenon
-- while most intense in Antarctica --
is having a major impact on the
mountains of Latin America, warn
scientists.
One can no longer speak of ”eternal
ice” in reference to mountain
glaciers. This is proved by the
continual reduction of the
glacier-covered areas of the Southern
Ice Fields in Chile and Argentina, of
the Mexican volcano Popocatépetl, and
of the Callejón de Huaylas, known as
”the Peruvian Switzerland”.
Latin America's glaciers are suffering
the devastating impacts of global
warming and of the meteorological
phenomenon of rains and drought known
as El Niño and La Niña, and of
volcanic eruptions.
Glaciers hold 70 percent of the
planet's freshwater, equivalent to a
depth of 70 meters across the world's
oceans. Antarctica stores 91 percent
of this ice, but the importance of the
remaining nine percent is not to be
underestimated.
As water sources, glaciers are vital
for herding communities and for
farmers, but environmentalists report
that they are also being destroyed by
mining companies, which consume large
quantities of water in processing ore.
Interest in Mexico's glaciers was
spurred by the search for indicators
of global warming, says Patricia
Julio, researcher at the Geology
Institute of the Autonomous National
University of Mexico.
Popocatépetl, ”mountain that
smokes” in the indigenous Náhuatl
language, rises 465 meters above sea
level and is located where the states
of Morelos, Puebla and Mexico meet,
some 60 km north of the capital.
The process of glacier extinction
there began to pick up speed in 2000,
due to volcanic activity, though
climate change and the impacts of
human activities have long been
affecting the ice fields.
”What happens next winter (December
through February) could be
definitive” for the glaciers'
survival, Julio told Tierramérica.
Mexico's glaciers are of particular
importance because they are the only
ones situated within 19 degrees
latitude North. In 1997, scientists
began systematic observations of
Popocatépetl, whose total glacial
area was estimated at 0.53 square km
in 2000.
The ice fields lost 1,500 square
meters per year from 1982 to 1996, and
its current area is just 30 percent of
what was measured in the 1950s by
archaeologist José Luis Lorenzo.
Peru, meanwhile, with 470,000 hectares
covered by what ”eternal ice”,
possesses 70 percent of the mountain
glaciers within the Earth's tropics.
In the past 20 years the ice-covered
area of the Peruvian Andes has been
reduced 20 percent, says activist
Jorge Alvarez, with the
non-governmental Board for the Defence
of Natural and Cultural Heritage.
”And the process is tending to
accelerate,” he said in a Tierramérica
interview.
”On Mount Huascarán, Peru's most
famous mountain, a loss of 12.8 square
km of ice has occurred, around 40
percent of what it covered 30 years
ago,” noted Alvarez.
”The acceleration of the
deglaciation process is a catastrophic
danger in the short and medium
terms,” says Carmen Felipe,
president of the governmental Water
Management Institute.
In the short term, the melting could
cause overflows of reservoirs and
trigger mudslides, and in the medium
term, reduction in water supplies,
said the Peruvian expert.
In the southern Andes, the most
detailed studies are focused on the
Southern Ice Fields in the Patagonian
region of Chile and Argentina.
It is the largest glacial area in the
Southern Hemisphere, after Antarctica,
covering an area of 13,000 square km.
A report from the University of
Chile's Glaciology Laboratory states
that most of the ice field's 48
valleys have seen a sharp reduction in
recent years.
The giant glacier lost 50 square km in
surface area from 1945 to 1986, while
its thickness was reduced by as much
as 14 meters between 1991 and 1993.
The same deterioration suffered in
western Antarctica ”is occurring on
a smaller scale throughout the Andean
glaciers,” reported award-winning
researcher Claudio Teitelboim, of the
Glaciology and Climate Change
Laboratory at the Centre for
Scientific Research (CECS) of Valdivia,
in southern Chile.
The director of the laboratory, Gino
Casassa, warns that the deterioration
of the mountain glaciers is a serious
problem, as much for the climate and
geographic implications as for the
fact that ”during droughts we rely
on the water reserves provided by
those glaciers.”
(Gustavo González is an IPS
correspondent. Abraham Lama/Peru and
Pilar Franco/ Mexico contributed to
this report.)
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