Tourists shell out big money to see these towering temples of ice. But a decade-long drought and global warming are ravaging a resource millions rely on as researchers and residents continue to sound the alarm.
Published Mar. 1, 2022 3:00 PM EST | Updated Mar. 3, 2022 12:53 PM EST
Santos Catalan sets off on the tranquil waters of Chile’s Lake General Carrera, his small, wooden motorboat navigating a fjord carved through some of the most spectacular towering mountain glaciers in the Andes.
As he does most days, the 60-year-old Catalan is shuttling tourists who have come far and wide to reach this point, eager to take in views of one of the most breathtaking places on Earth -- the Cordón Contreras glacier -- one of thousands that dominate this frozen side of Patagonia.
Catalan, a sheep and cattle rancher who’s been guiding glacier seekers on the side for decades, is accustomed to this pristine landscape, as a local living among the Andes.
But he’s also had a front-row seat to something disturbing: The once abundant white landscape all around him has been shrinking -- fast.
"This has changed a lot. Fifteen or 20 years ago it began to snow very little, and it is melting more and more because the heat is very strong," he said.
Ranch farmer Santos Catalan, of Chile, takes a small group of tourists on a sight-seeing trip on Lake General Carrera near the Northern Patagonia Ice Field, on Feb. 13, 2022. (AFP)
Seasonal glacial melting is part of the normal cycle of nature in these mountain regions; however, in recent years researchers have been finding that the Andean glaciers are being depleted more quickly, thinning by nearly 3 feet a year since 2000. Scientists point to unusually warm summers that are starting earlier and shifting rain patterns -- both signs of climate change -- that are accelerating the already rapid melt.
“Glaciers are like thermometers,” Andrea Carretta, a Chilean park ranger, said. "It’s very evident that climate change, the increase in global temperature, the most affected are the glaciers… they are very sensitive to that.”
For years these glacier-draped mountains have served as nature’s "water towers" for those in low-lying communities as well as for the millions who live hundreds of miles away to the north, in and around Chile’s capital of Santiago.
"The glacial melt is what makes it possible for us to maintain the basins with water in the summer season, when there is no rain,” said Alexis Segovia, a glaciologist with the Chilean Regional Glaciology Unit.
But the accelerated melting is taking a toll on what glacier expert Mauri Pelto calls “natural frozen reservoirs.”
Broken ice floats in Lake Argentina below the cracked and creviced face of the Perito Moreno Glacier, part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, in the Los Glaciares National Park on April 5, 2019 in Santa Cruz province, Argentina. The ice fields are the largest expanse of ice in the Southern Hemisphere outside of Antarctica but according to NASA, are melting away at some of the highest rates on the planet as a result of global warming. (Photo by David Silverman/Getty Images)
The Andean region has been enduring its driest 11-year period on record. On average, since the drought began in 2010, precipitation in Chile has been 20% to 45% below normal, according to NASA. That, combined with rising temperatures, has been a strain on glaciers that simply can’t keep up. Scientists are finding that glaciers are melting faster than snowfall can accumulate and then form new ice.
Pelto, a professor at Nichols College in Massachusetts, told AccuWeather that this year especially (Andes summers run from December to February) has been an unusually warm one for the northern Andes regions.
“Most summers are not like this,” he said, adding that temperatures have been rising “exceptionally earlier” in the winter.
“Even if it happens two out of every four years, it’s going to be a really big problem, and that’s what we’re seeing,” Pelto explained. “It can really strip away at previous snowpacks.”
This expanse of glaciers that comprise the three Patagonian ice fields blanketing a wide swath of the Andes in Chile and Argentina has been receding “significantly,” said Jorge O'Kuinghttons, a hydrologist who heads Chile’s Regional Glaciology Unit, told AFP.
In fact, out of the 26,000 glaciers that make up the ice fields, only two actually grew over the past several decades, according to Segovia. This is especially important because the ice fields account for the third largest glacial reserve in the world, behind Antarctica and Greenland.
"Climate change has had a consequence in the Patagonia region, a significant increase in temperature and a significant decrease in precipitation has resulted in less snow accumulation," O'Kuinghttons said.
Pelto said when these “strongly negative balance years” eat away at a mountain's snowpack, blackened firn (snowpack retained from previous winters that's transitioning to ice) is exposed, which “melts more rapidly.”
“The glaciers get really dark in color and melt faster because the dark ice absorbs the sunlight faster,” Pelto said, noting “they’re just not going to recover that easily.”
A large tour boat sails in front of the San Rafael Glacier in southern Chile on Feb. 13, 2022. The melting of the glaciers is a natural phenomenon that climate change has accelerated significantly, said Jorge O'Kuinghttons, head of Chile's Regional Unit of Glaciology. (Photo by Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP via Getty Images)
On Monday, a special panel of the United Nations released a sobering report on the climate, cautioning that glaciers and ice sheets will not soon refreeze, with water availability projected to decline by as much as 20%.
Citing the urgency, Chile’s science minister Andres Couve has called the steady decline in water reserves a "national priority."
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The excessive melting is concerning for other reasons as well.
Water dammed by glaciers can be released by a sudden collapse of calving ice masses that can deluge areas.
“Areas are being flooded these days that were never flooded before,” O’Kuinghttons said.
Runoff from the melting glaciers also feeds into the rivers to help irrigate crops and power hydroelectric facilities downstream.
Jorge O'Kuinghttons, center, head of Chile's Regional Unit of Glaciology, and other scientists work on top of the Exploradores Glacier in Chile on Feb. 14, 2022. (Photo by PABLO COZZAGLIO/AFP via Getty Images)
Scientists warn that at the current rate of the glaciers' retreat, the spigot will run dry, and sooner rather than later.
“In the Andes, when you have a year like this one, you have a smaller ice cube in future years,” Pelto said.
The loss of glacier surface also cuts down on its ability to reflect sunlight and keep the planet cool. “Glaciers play a fundamental role in curbing warming because they return a lot of radiation to the atmosphere,” said Segovia.
For now, scientists are continually working to track the glaciers via field data collected from numerous weather stations positioned along the Andes range in the hopes of better and more precisely understanding how rapidly the region’s climate is changing and impacting glaciers.
Recent findings from new digital satellite mapping of the Earth’s glaciers have revealed that glacier volume in the Andes is actually 27% less than scientists previously thought.
One doesn't have to go far for signs of retreating glaciers in the Patagonia region, according to researchers.
At another end of the North Patagonian Ice Field, the San Rafael Glacier is one of the world's most actively calving, "receding dramatically under the influence of global warming," according to European Space Agency satellite images.
East of San Rafael, the beautiful Exploradores Glacier has shrunk to the point where the spectacular view of towering ice that once welcomed visitors half an hour into San Rafael National Park is now only visible after two and a half hours.
Carretta, the park ranger, says the glacier is losing about 5 inches a day during the summer, less in the winter.
"Every day it’s getting worse…There is no turning back."
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