Latin America's Glaciers Disappearing Fast

[hatrack]

Gustavo Gonzalez (Tierramerica)

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"In the past 20 years, the ice-covered area of the Peruvian Andes has been reduced 20 percent, says 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 Tierramerica interview. 'On Mount Huascaran, 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.

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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 metres between 1991 and 1993.

The same deterioration suffered in western Antarctica 'is occurring on a smaller scale throughout the Andean glaciers,' reported award-2inning researcher Claudio Teitelbolm, of the glaciology and Climate Change Laboratory at the Centre for Scientific Research (CECS) of Valdivia, in southern Chile."

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http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=19698