PASTORURI GLACIER, Peru (AP) — Peru’s “White Mountain Range” may soon have to change its name.
The ice atop Cordillera Blanca, the largest glacier chain in the tropics, is melting fast because of rising temperatures, and peaks are turning brown. The trend is highlighting fears of global warming and, scientists say, is endangering future water supplies to the arid coast where most Peruvians live.
Glaciologists consider the health of the world’s glaciers an indicator of global warming and they warn that what is happening in the Andes signals trouble ahead.
“To me it’s the rate of ice loss that’s a real concern,” because when melting accelerates, the ice cannot replenish itself, said Lonnie Thompson, a leading glacier expert at Ohio State University.
Thompson, a geologist monitoring glacier retreat on the Andes, Himalayas and Kilimanjaro, said tropical glaciers are melting all over the world because of rising temperatures “and where we have the data to prove it, the rate of ice loss is actually accelerating.”
Quelccaya in southern Peru, the world’s largest tropical ice cap, is retreating at about 200 feet a year, up from 20 feet a year in the 1960s, Thompson said.
Melting is also visible in the other Andean countries – Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.
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