Peruvian Innovators Trying to Save Disappearing Glaciers

A workers carry buckets of paint up the slop of Chalón Sombrero. The paint will be used to whitewash rocks in an effort to recreate a glacier lost to climate change.


Peru is a dry country, dependent on glaciers for virtually all of its water supply. But as the climate changes, the glaciers are drying up and vanishing. But two Peruvian entrepreneurs have conceived homemade solutions to try and reverse the disappearance of Peru's lifeline.

Some 14,000 feet up in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, glaciologist Benjamin Morales stands in a windswept dirt parking lot and looks across a rock-strewn slope.

In the 1980s and 90s, Morales says, thousands of people came here to watch international ski tournaments. Back then, he says “all this was ice.”

The skiers raced down the glistening white Pastoruri glacier, whose broad white ramp unfurled from 2,000 feet above nearly all the way to this dusty lot. Since then, Morales has watched the glacier steadily melt away. Today, its closest edge is about a mile from the parking lot.

Global warming is eating away at glaciers around the world. In Peru, a few intrepid souls have decided not to sit by watching, but to try and do something about it.

“It’s been regressing year after year,” Morales said, “and this has caused the most important adventure tourism site in Peru to be all but closed.”

Morales knows that the Pastoruri glacier is hardly unique. Glaciers around the world are falling victim to global warming. In Peru, Morales estimates the Andes have already lost at least 25 percent of their ice.

And what’s at stake here is more than just a few ski slopes. Peru is largely a desert country and its thirst is relieved largely by glacier-fed streams. So glaciers here are a vital natural resource. 

That’s why a few years ago, Morales decided he had to do more than simply watch the ice melt.

“We want to find ways to stop this loss of good water,” he said as he tromped over the Pastoruri glacier in heavy mountaineer’s boots and a powder blue parka. “We want to start taking action to keep that from happening.”

Morales thought long and hard about how he could stop the local effects of a global problem. Then one day, it struck him: sawdust.

He’d noticed how sawdust is traditionally used in his hometown to protect ice brought down from the mountains from melting. And he thought, if sawdust can insulate a block of ice, maybe it could insulate a whole glacier.

So he bought 150 big sacks of it from a sawmill, hired a crew to cart it onto the tongue of the glacier, and had them cover a backyard-sized plot in about six inches of sawdust.

Today, ten months later, the impact of the experiment is stunning. The entire ice edge melted and sank in the summer thaw—everywhere except the sawdust-insulated portion, which remained stubbornly frozen. It looks like a shaggy mastodon towering above Morales’ head.

“So we have proven that it’s possible to prevent glaciers from melting,” he said.

Inventors call it a proof of concept. And having established that sawdust will insulate glaciers, Morales is now looking at other materials, like locally harvested straw, to do the insulating.

And he’s not alone in his efforts to save Peru’s glaciers.

Several hundred miles south, near the city of Ayacucho, herder Salomon Pichca is part of an effort to bring back a glacier that’s already gone away.

Pichca is a small man with deep set eyes who used to graze livestock in marshes nearby, until the local glacier disappeared and the marshes dried up. Today, he’s part of a work crew a couple of miles above the nearest road that’s slathering homemade white paint onto black boulders near a summit called Chalón Sombrero.

It’s backbreaking work. Pichca says the crew hauls lime up from the road on lamas, unloads it, then turns around and heads back for water. Then they mix the lime, water and other ingredients, lug buckets of the paint up the rugged slope, and slosh it onto the sun-warmed rocks.

Eduardo Gold, an entrepreneur from Lima who’s the project’s architect, says the idea for the project came from a simple idea. 

"The color white reflects light and prevents the transformation of that light into infrared radiation," he said.

Simply put, white rocks don’t get as warm as black ones.

Gold hopes an entire white slope will dramatically cool off high mountain breezes, and that summits like Chalón Sombrero could once again be cold enough to retain snow and ice year-round, beginning the process of rebuilding a glacier.

So far, Gold’s men have whitewashed an area the size of a supermarket parking lot and he says the paint has already brought back wisps of ice to the mountain. He hopes to prove his idea’s value once the crew has covered half a square mile of rock.

If it works here, he wants to do the same on other mountains.

The World Bank has named Gold’s experiment one of “100 Ideas to Save the Planet.” The project has also been embraced by regional officials. But some remain skeptical.

“From a theoretical point of view of physics, one can understand,” former park service chief Luis Alfaro said. “But the question is, at what price?”

Alfaro worries, among other things, about the environmental impact of the paint when it washes off the rocks.

Others argue that tiny projects like painting mountaintops or insulating glaciers can never save the hundreds of square mile of mountain ice that still remain in Peru. Instead, they say, Peru must build new reservoirs to capture and store the water once held in glaciers.

But Peru can hardly afford such huge investments. And with its life-giving water supply at risk, many here, like former Deputy Environment Minister Vanessa Vereau, feel the country can’t afford to dismiss any idea for saving its glaciers.

She says no one knows whether such experiments will work.

“But since we need to experiment and conserve water for the future, I think we should try. I think we should try," she added.


pri.org

Himalayan Glaciers: Climate Change, Water Resources, and Water Security

Scientific evidence shows that most glaciers in South Asia's Hindu Kush Himalayan region are retreating, but the consequences for the region's water supply are unclear, this report finds. The Hindu Kush Himalayan region is the location of several of Asia’s great river systems, which provide water for drinking, irrigation, and other uses for about 1.5 billion people. Recent studies show that at lower elevations, glacial retreat is unlikely to cause significant changes in water availability over the next several decades, but other factors, including groundwater depletion and increasing human water use, could have a greater impact. Higher elevation areas could experience altered water flow in some river basins if current rates of glacial retreat continue, but shifts in the location, intensity, and variability of rain and snow due to climate change will likely have a greater impact on regional water supplies.

Key Findings

• The meltwater from glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, which covers eight countries across Asia, supplements several great river systems such as the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra. Scientific evidence shows that most glaciers in the Himalayan region are retreating, leading to concerns that, over time, normal glacier melt will not be able to contribute to the region's water supply each year.
• Glaciers in the eastern and central regions of the Himalayas appear to be retreating at rates comparable to glaciers in other parts of the world. In the western Himalayas, glaciers are more stable and may even be increasing in size. There is uncertainty in projections of future changes in precipitation, but shifts in the location and intensity of snow and rain could also impact the rate of glacial retreat.
• Variations in climate; in the timing, amount, and type of precipitation; and in glacial behavior and dynamics across the vast Hindu Kush Himalayan region mean that it is challenging to determine exactly how retreating glaciers will affect water supply in each location. It is likely that the contribution of glacier meltwater to water supply in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region may have been overestimated in the past, for example by not differentiating between the contributions to water supply of meltwater from glaciers and meltwater from snow.
• Overall, retreating glaciers over the next several decades are unlikely to cause significant changes in water availability at lower elevations, which depend primarily on monsoon rains. However, for high elevation areas, current glacier retreat rates, if they continue, could alter streamflow in some basins. Assuming annual precipitation in the form of snow and freezing rain remains the same, the loss of water stored as glacial ice will likely not change the amount of meltwater that supplements rivers and streams each summer.
• Glacial meltwater can act as a buffer against the hydrologic impacts of a changing climate, such as drought. Thus, water stored as glacial ice could serve as the Himalayan region's hydrologic insurance. Although retreating glaciers would provide more meltwater in the shorter term as the glacier shrinks, the loss of glacier "insurance" could become problematic over the longer term.
• Groundwater is an integral part of the Hindu Kush Himalayan region's hydrology, although uncertainties about its contributions to water supply are great. It is clear that groundwater is already being depleted in many areas, with evidence that in the central Ganges Basin, overdraft of groundwater is likely to have an earlier and larger impact on water supplies than foreseeable changes in the supply of glacial meltwater.
• Social changes such as changing patterns of water use and water management decisions, are likely to have at least as much of an impact on water demand as environmental factors do on water supply. Many of the region's river basins are already water stressed, and this water stress could intensify as populations grow. Water scarcity will likely affect the rural and urban poor most severely, as these groups have the least capacity to move to new locations as needed.
• It is predicted that the region will become increasingly urbanized as cities expand to absorb migrants in search of economic opportunities. As living standards and populations rise, water use will likely increase—for example, as more people eat diets rich in meat, more water will be needed for agricultural use. The effects of future climate change could further exacerbate water stress.
• Water resources management and the provision of clean water and sanitation is already a challenge in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region. The adequacy and effectiveness of existing water management institutions, which focus on natural hazards and disaster reduction, provides an indicator of how the region will likely cope with changes in water supply.
• Although the history of international river disputes suggests that cooperation is more likely than violent conflict, current political disputes in the region could complicate the process of reaching agreements on resource disputes. Changes in the availability of water resources could play an increasing role in political tensions, especially if existing water management institutions do not better account for the social, economic, and ecological complexities of the region.
• To effectively respond to the effects of climate change, water management systems will need to take account of the social, economic, and ecological complexities of the region. This means it will be important to expand research and monitoring programs to gather more detailed, consistent, and accurate data on demographics, water supply, demand, and scarcity.

dels.nas.edu

Report Finds Patagonian Glaciers Melting in a Hurry

Ice fields in southern South America are rapidly losing volume and in most cases thinning at even the highest elevations, contributing to sea-level rise at "substantially higher" rates than observed from the 1970s through the 1990s, according to a study published Wednesday.

The rapid melting, based on satellite observations, suggests the ice field's contribution to global sea-level rise has increased by half since the end of the 20th century, jumping from 0.04 millimeters per year to about .07 mm, and accounting for 2 percent of annual sea-level rise since 1998.

The southern and northern Patagonian ice fields are the largest mass of ice in the southern hemisphere outside of Antarctica. The findings spell trouble for other glaciers worldwide, according to the study's lead author, Cornell University researcher Michael Willis.

"Patagonia is kind of a poster child for rapidly changing glacier systems," he said in a statement. The region, he added, "is supplying water to sea-level at a big rate compared to its size."

The study was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Melting glaciers, both in South America and the Himalaya, are a major concern to populations downstream who depend on the ice fields as a reservoir providing a steady summer water supply for drinking and agriculture.

Scientists suspect the Andes, for instance, have already surpassed "peak water" and that hundreds of thousands of people living downstream of the glaciers in Peru and Ecuador now face a future of lower flows and increased variability in local rivers.

The new study compared satellite imagery from two different missions over a 12-year period starting in 2000. On average, they found, the Southern Patagonian Icefield glaciers thinned by about six feet per year during that period.

Some glaciers were stagnant; others even advanced slightly, Willis said. "But on the whole, retreat and thinning is prevalent."

Warming air temperatures contributed to the thinning throughout the mountain range, Willis noted. And the warmer temperatures increased the chances that rain – as opposed to snow – would fall on and around the glaciers. That double threat increases the amount of water under the glaciers, decreasing friction and moving more ice to the oceans, he said.

Other researchers said the new study could provide valuable information for future predictions, said Alex Gardner, an assistant professor at Clark University in Massachusetts, who was not involved in the study but researches glaciers and ice sheets. 

"A study like this really provides a strong data set to validate and calibrate glacial models," he said in a statement.

The Daily Climate

Survival of Tibetan Glaciers

Five ice cores were extracted from the indicated locationson the Tibetan plateau. The white dashed line is the northerly boundary of the Indian monsoon.


Glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau, sometimes called Earth's "third pole", hold the largest ice mass outside the polar regions. These glaciers act as a water storage tower for South and East Asia, releasing melt water in warm months to the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra and other river systems, providing fresh water to more than a billion people. In the dry season glacial melt provides half or more of the water in many rivers.


Tibetan glaciers have been melting at an accelerating rate over the past decade. Glacier changes depend on local weather, especially snowfall, so glacier retreat or advance fluctuates with time and place. Thus it is inevitable that some Tibetan glaciers advance over short periods, as has been reported. But overall, Tibetan glaciers are retreating at an alarming rate.

Global warming must be the primary cause of glacier retreat, which is occurring on a global scale, but observed rapid melt rates suggest that other factors may be involved. To investigate the possible role of black soot in causing glacial melt, a team of scientists from Chinese research institutes extracted ice cores from five locations on the Tibetan Plateau.

Black soot, which includes black carbon (BC) and organic carbon (OC), absorbs sunlight and can speed glacial melting if BC reaches values of order 10 ng/g (nanograms per gram) or larger. The ice core data revealed that BC reached values of 20-50 ng/g in the 1950s and 1960s for the four stations that are downwind of European pollution sources. BC and OC amounts decreased strongly in the early 1970s, probably because of clean air regulations in Europe.

However, the ice cores also reveal that in the past decade BC and OC began to increase again, even on the Zuoqiupu glacier, which is mainly subject to Asian sources. The data suggest that increased black soot arises from Asian sources, especially the Indian subcontinent.

The measured concentrations of BC and OC refer to fresh snow. But as the snow melts in the spring and summer the black soot concentrations on the glacier surface increase, because the soot particles do not escape in the melt water as efficiently as the water itself. As a consequence, the soot noticeably darkens the glacier surface during the melt season, increases absorption of sunlight, and speeds glacier disintegration.

In a new paper by Xu et al., we concluded that black soot is contributing to the rapid melt of glaciers in the Himalayas. And continued, "business-as-usual" emissions of greenhouse gases and black soot will result in the loss of most Himalayan glaciers this century, with devastating effects on fresh water supplies in dry seasons.

But business-as-usual emissions are not inevitable. An alternative scenario, which stabilizes the glaciers and has other benefits for global climate and human health, requires a reduction of major human-made climate forcing agents that have a warming effect — that means greenhouses gases, especially carbon dioxide, as well as black soot.

Quantitative policy implications have been defined: coal emissions must be phased out over the next 20 years, and unconventional fossil fuels, such as tar sands and oil shale, must remain undeveloped. Combined with improved agricultural and forestry practices and reduction of methane and black soot emissions, these actions would avoid demise of the Tibetan glaciers.

Not coincidentally, these policy actions are the same as those required to stabilize Earth's energy balance and keep the climate near the Holocene climate range in which civilization developed. The question is whether the global community can exercise the free will to limit fossil fuel emissions and move to clean energies of the future — or is it inevitable that all fossil fuels will be burned?

The conclusion is that prospects for survival of Tibetan glaciers can be much improved by reducing black soot emissions. The black soot arises especially from diesel engines, coal use without effective scrubbers, and biomass burning, including cook stoves. Reduction of black soot via cleaner energies would have other benefits for human health and agricultural productivity. However, survival of the glaciers also requires halting global warming, which depends upon stabilizing and reducing greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide.

NASA: Goddard Institute for Space Studies

The loss of these glaciers would be catastrophic for India, and all the countries of southeast Asia, that rely on them for much of their water supply. 

New Zealand: Our Frozen Assets Slowly Melting Away

The Tasman Glacier has become about 150m thinner since its first survey in 1891.

Scientists revealed this past week New Zealand's famous Franz Josef Glacier is dramatically retreating. Deidre Mussen investigates what the future holds for our nation's glaciers.

Over the past three decades, some New Zealand glaciers have quietly vanished.

Nameless and far from tourists' gaze, they have melted from our history books without creating a ripple.

And more are likely to follow, according to New Zealand's glacier godfather, Dr Trevor Chinn.

"It's like taking books out of a library. If you take a few out, it doesn't really matter, but when you've got no library left, it's really important," the 74-year-old glaciologist says.

In 1978, he started the country's first and only record of all glaciers for the World Glacier Inventory, taking 10 years to complete.

"Halfway through, I realised we were picking up climate change." During that time, he counted 3144 glaciers, the bulk in the Southern Alps, and only 18 in the North Island.

While only about 400 are named, he says a few small glaciers on his list have since disappeared, starved to death from climate change pushing the permanent snowline above their snow-capturing neve.

He believes his survey needs to be repeated and is likely to reveal other newly extinct glaciers.

Chinn also does an annual aerial survey of end-of-summer snowlines for 50 Southern Alps glaciers for National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa), which he started in 1977.

That data is the basis for newly published research he co-authored into the state of New Zealand's glaciers.

The paper, published in Global and Planetary Change, an international journal, in April, shows New Zealand's glaciers have lost 15 per cent of ice mass in the 32 years to 2008, a massive 8.4km3. However, the rate of loss was less dramatic than the previous 100 years, when ice mass almost halved.

Chinn says the picture is better than in most glaciated countries worldwide, because 

weather fluctuations caused some steep glaciers, like Franz Josef, to mainly advance over about 25 years until 2008.

But the current retreat is expected to accelerate in New Zealand and worldwide.

While changes to Franz Josef Glacier have attracted much publicity, Chinn's research shows more than two-thirds of ice mass lost in that period has been from our 12 large valley glaciers. 

These glaciers are slow to respond to climate change because of their slow creep. Our largest glacier, Tasman Glacier, takes about 100 to 150 years to react.

Glaciers remain unchanged, or in equilibrium, if the amount of snowfall at the neve equals ice melting from its tongue, the section below the permanent snowline, Chinn says.

Currently, these large glaciers still cover almost the same land area, thanks to a protective covering of several metres of gravel debris on its tongue, which slows melting.

However, the depth of the ice has reduced.

Tasman Glacier, for example, has become about 150 metres thinner since its first survey in 1891.

Lakes have also formed at the end of the large glaciers from the 1970s to 1990s.

He says rapid lake expansion has followed, causing catastrophic ice loss from calving and destruction of the lower body of the glacier.

In comparison, our steep glaciers respond quickly to climate change because the ice flows fast.

Franz Josef and Fox glaciers, two of our speediest, take only five to 10 years to react to climate change.

He says steep glaciers on both sides of the Southern Alps have had "pulses" of advancing, particularly because of good snow years and cooler summers between 1978 and 1998.

Chinn's glacier career began in 1965 when studying Tasman Glacier for its impact on water resources for hydropower.

He has no intention of retiring, particularly as global warming kicks in.

"The glaciers themselves have been changing markedly and predictably.

"Scientists know it is very important to measure your ice volume in your country. It's the sum of all climate change. I would say glaciers give you the best measurement for climate change. That's why we should be concerned."

A 2008 report on global glacier changes by the World Glacier Monitoring Service and the United Nations Environmental Programme states the annual melting rate of glaciers doubled after the turn of the millennium.

It predicts worldwide glacier shrinkage will accelerate and warns they may disappear from many mountain ranges by the end of the 21st century.

Human-induced climate change is blamed and it highlights serious potential impacts. 

"Glaciers are a critical component of the earth's system and the current accelerated melting and retreat of glaciers have severe impacts on the environment and human well-being, including vegetation patterns, economic livelihoods, natural disasters, and the water and energy supply," the report says.

Victoria University senior research fellow in glaciology, Dr Brian Anderson, agrees.

This year, he has begun a three-year $345,000 project modelling glacier retreat to predict what will happen by the end of this century.

By then, New Zealand's temperature is projected to be about 2.0 to 2.9C warmer.

It is bad news for the 11km-long Franz Josef Glacier, which he predicts will retreat a further 4km by 2100.

It will likely lose its entire tongue, becoming more than 6km shorter than when survey records began in 1893, when it was more than 13km long.

The glacier has generally been retreating since then, with several periods of advancing.

In 1983, it was 10km long, its shortest since records began, before spending the following 25 years advancing a total of 1.5km.

That reversed in 2008, the result of lean winters and warm summers in the preceding five or so years, Anderson says. Since then, it has retreated about 400m and has lost much bulk, becoming 140m thinner at its end in just four years, including a dramatic 70m last year.

"This was many times faster than I thought it could have thinned. Around that time, a massive hole developed about 500m from its terminal end, further speeding up its demise and making it too dangerous for guides to take tourists by foot onto the glacier, forcing them to use helicopters."

He says all New Zealand glaciers are very sensitive to climate change because we are in a maritime climate, getting a lot of snow and precipitation, but not very cold temperatures.

Our temperature has risen about 1C in the past century, pushing the permanent snowline higher, reducing the area collecting snow for glaciers.

Niwa has increased its monitoring of snow and ice in alpine areas because of the growing importance in assessing climate change, establishing high-altitude meteorological stations along the Southern Alps.

It is currently studying the impact of glacier retreat on water resources in the upper Waitaki catchment.

Anderson has also worked on the Waitaki study, estimating likely changes to glaciers in the area by 2100.

Summer melting from glaciers buffers river flows in drought years, he says.

"When there isn't much rain, the river flows into the Waitaki does rely on glacier flows." 

However, he says New Zealand's rivers are less dependent on glacier flows than other parts of the world because of our high rainfall through most of the year.

Canterbury University geography lecturer and glaciologist, Dr Heather Purdie, has studied Franz's neighbour, Fox Glacier, for the past seven years.

Fox, like Franz, was at its current day maximum in the late 1890s, reaching 15km down the valley, but shrank to 12.5km by 1983.

Now, it measures less than 13km long and is shrinking in all dimensions – width, thickness and length.

She predicts the retreat will continue for at least the next five to 10 years.

"We are going to see them at those 1983 points again relatively soon because we haven't had any years with a combination of good snowfalls and cool summer temperatures since 2006 ... There's nothing to stop the retreat.

"We need to have more snow accumulating than ice melting in order to turn this current retreat around." 

The Press: New Zealand 

Glaciers, Dams and Chile's Baker River

Four years ago, the Baker River in Aysén Patagonia suddenly tripled in size, causing a virtual river tsunami. In less than 48 hours, roads, bridges and farms were severely damaged and dozens of livestock drowned. Residents were in disbelief. Jonathan Leidich, an American whose company regularly leads tourists on treks up to nearby glaciers, hiked to the Colonia Glacier at the eastern flank of the Northern Patagonian Ice Field and discovered the source of the mysterious flood: Lake Cachet 2 had vanished. This enormous, two-square-mile glacial lake had emptied its 200 million cubic meters of water in just a matter of hours.

Lake Cachet 2 before the GLOF...

What happened? Glaciologists say it was yet another “glacial lake outburst flood,” or GLOF. An increasing rate of melting at the Colonia Glacier swelled the lake so much so that the resulting water pressure gradually forced the creation of a tunnel beneath the surface of the adjacent ice and drained the lake. Since Cachet 2 emptied in 2008, the lake has “disappeared” ten more times.

....and after. Photos courtesy of Patagonia Adventure Expeditions.

Such GLOFs don’t necessarily arise because of climate change; indeed, some four decades ago a GLOF occurred on the Baker River. But a clear warming trend over the past decade has taken its toll on the world’s glaciers, and it is widely agreed that climate change is dramatically increasing the frequency and intensity of GLOFs.

In December 2010, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released a report on mountain glaciers at the climate-change talks in Cancún, Mexico, stating that glaciers on Argentine and Chilean Patagonia are “losing mass faster and for longer than glaciers in other parts of the world.”

“Accumulation of science shows us a clear general trend of melting glaciers linked to a warming climate,” UNEP executive director Achim Steine said.

Glaciers on the Chilean side of Patagonia account for more than 90 percent of the Patagonian region’s ice fields. Those fields consist of two non-contiguous sheets: the Northern Patagonian Ice Field, which includes Cachet 2, and the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the world’s third-largest continental ice sheet after those of Antarctica and Greenland.

Data show that since 1995, the rate of thinning has more than doubled. Studies from NASA show that the Patagonian Ice Fields, which extend some 6,600 square miles altogether, account for about 9 percent of annual global sea level change from mountain glaciers.

Skeptics of global warming point to some Patagonia glaciers that remain stable, or that are even growing, such as Argentina’s Perito Moreno Glacier. But Gino Casassa, director of Glacier and Climate Change Research at the Center for Scientific Studies, said global warming can also lead to more rain, or snow in the case of regions such as Patagonia.

“We have scientific evidence showing a new cycle of activity in GLOFs in Patagonia and not just Lago Cachet,” Casassa said. “Glaciers are melting and lakes growing in size throughout the region — a clear sign of global warming. We will see GLOFs more often.”

Casassa said that in part, Patagonian glaciers are more susceptible to global warming because they are dominated by so-called “calving glaciers,” which release icebergs into lakes or the sea. There are also other climate change effects that intensify melting, such as elevation feedback. 

“As a glacier thins, the (upper edge retreats to lower elevations) — often in Patagonia by about five meters (16 feet) per year,” he said. “As that happens, atmospheric temperatures get warmer because you are at a lower elevation. This can be important in speeding up the melting of a glacier.”

The GLOFs are not just happening at an increasing rate in Patagonia, but worldwide in countries that are home to mountain glaciers. In April 2010, a huge slab of ice the size of several football fields broke off a glacier on Mount Hualcán and plunged into a lake in central Peru, creating a tsunami-like wave at least 76 feet high that flooded four towns, destroyed at least 50 homes and severely damaged a water plant serving a town of 60,000 people.

This accident came on the heels of the warmest summer season on record in the Southern Hemisphere, according to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Compared with other countries, Peru is unusually well-prepared to cope with sudden lake floods, experts say. The Peruvian Andes mountain chain has witnessed more than 30 glacial floods in the past, killing nearly 6,000 people altogether since 1941. As a result, the Peruvian government has invested millions of dollars in working to drain or dam glacial lakes to lessen the hazardous risks.

Yet despite significant initiatives to safeguard nearby towns, Lake 513 on the slope of Mount Hualcán burst. Peru is experiencing rapid glacial change.

A 2009 World Bank report states that, due to warmer temperatures, Peru’s glaciers have declined 22 percent since 1975 and are likely to disappear in two decades, threatening to provoke more floods and eliminating a major source of water and hydropower for its people. In the Himalayan region of Nepal, China, Bhutan, India and Pakistan, the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development has identified 200 “potentially dangerous” glacial lakes.

Scientists predict that several major rivers fed by the Himalayas, such as the storied Ganges River in India, are set to be affected by massive glacial floods in the years ahead and eventually, as the glaciers retreat, the site of serious water shortages for untold millions of people during dry seasons.

DANGEROUS COMBINATION 

GLOF events at the Baker River in Chilean Patagonia, considered Chile’s largest river in terms of water volume, can sometimes raise the river up to 18 feet in some areas. Historically, GLOFs have been known to increase water flow to as much as 45,000 cubic feet per second.

“The lake is growing in size after every GLOF,” the 38-year-old Leidich said. “Which means the floods are just going to be more devastating in the future.”

Especially worrisome to Leidich and others is the combined effect these GLOFs may have together with a series of controversial large dams planned for the Baker River as part of a US$10 billion HidroAysén project.

The companies pushing the project, Endesa Chile, owned by Italy’s Enel, and Chile’s Colbún, hope to get the first of their Baker River dams readied by 2015. But a possible GLOF-related accident at the dam could wipe out the 512-person Tortel, a small, tranquil village located at the mouth of the Baker River, where the river merges with the Pacific Ocean.

Tortel is already issuing GLOF-evacuation orders for its residents as the high-water mark of the Baker River hits new peaks with the GLOF events. A study by the Physics Department at Santiago’s Metropolitan Technology University found that if a dam on the Baker were to break, Tortel would suffer “catastrophic consequences” within less than an hour.

“This project goes against the development and future of Tortel,” Bernardo Lopez, mayor of Tortel, said.

HidroAysén has said that it has considered in its engineering studies potential GLOFs based on nearly 50 years of past history of GLOFs. But Alejandro Dussaillant, a Chilean expert on hydrology at Greenwich University in England who has studied closely the Lake Cachet GLOF and its effects on the river, said several factors could overwhelm HidroAysén´s projections.

“Up to now we have been lucky because up to now we have not had the worst-case scenario, which is the Baker floods, there is a GLOF from the Colonia glacier and both happen during high tide near Tortel.  As an engineer, we must always consider such extreme scenarios,” Dussaillant said.

“What has been happening up to now does not mean that it will be the same over the next 20 years. There are dynamic changes occurring to the source of the GLOFS, the glaciers and the system of lakes upstream from Lake Cachet 2, that must be studied further,” he added.

In addition to flooding, the GLOFs transport tremendous amounts of sediment, which not only contribute to higher flood levels but reduce the life span of the dam downstream by accumulating sediment in the reservoir and potentially damaging the turbines.

Brian Reid, a limnologist with the Coyhaique-based Centro de Investigación en Ecosistemas de la Patagonia (CIEP), is conducting regular research on the Baker River. Reid said when a GLOF occurs, the river not only increases greatly in size but it contains the maximum amount of sediment the river can hold.

“The idea of building a major dam on one of the most unstable rivers on the planet seems crazy to me,” he said. “For the amount of risk involved in this dam project from these GLOFs, the company’s responses in the environmental evaluation process have been completely irresponsible.”

Despite the widely-shared concerns by scientists over GLOF risks associated with the proposed dams, the Aysén Regional Environmental Commission in November 2010 accepted the company’s views regarding GLOFs, and it was no longer an issue in the evaluation process when the project was approved in May 2011.

Leidich has met with Chilean senators, government ministers and others to seek financing for protection measures for ranchers and others living along the Baker. His efforts led to the creation of an early-warning system called the Sentinel Project in October 2008. High-frequency radios, powered by solar panels and batteries, were distributed to most families in the flood zone so they can receive warnings. But Leidich said the program will not work the way it needs to in the long term until it receives adequate annual funding.

Leidich calls HidroAysén a “blasphemy.” The companies say their dams, with an early warning system in place, can handle a GLOF of up to 23,100 cubic feet per second of water, which is the most their predictions say they will have to deal with in the future. Leidich said he is skeptical.

“What it will mean to the people living in Tortel and all along the river when the dam has to release that amount of water? The answer: Everyone downstream is wiped out.” Leidich said. “This place is a canary in the coal mine for global warming,” he added. “If people want to see whether climate change is for real, here it is.”

Written by Jimmy Langman@The Santiago Times

Race to Map Africa's Forgotten Glaciers Before They Melt Away

                                                       ‘You can find glaciers unseen in 40 years’: one of Rwenzori’s summits in Uganda.

A team of scientists and photographers aims to document the Earth's threatened and fading glaciers

Ptolemy thought they were the source of the Nile and called them the Mountains of the Moon because of the perpetual mists that covered them; Stanley claimed to be the first non-African to see their icecap; and the many thousands of subsistence farmers who today live on the slopes of the fabled Rwenzori mountains in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo fear that warming temperatures are devastating their harvests.

While 20,000 people a year scale Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, just a handful of trekkers tackle the lower, 5,100m Rwenzori summits and witness the spectacular plant forms that grow in some of the wettest conditions on Earth. The result is that little is known about the condition of the many tropical glaciers that descend off the three peaks of mounts Baker, Speke and Africa's third highest peak, Mount Stanley.

But last month, a micro-expedition led by London-based Danish photographer Klaus Thymann returned from Uganda with the best evidence yet that the 43 glaciers found and named in 1906 are still mostly there, but are in dire condition and can be expected to disappear in a decade or two.

Thymann, his journalist colleague Ian Daly and a team of nine local Ugandans spent 18 days recording Rwenzori's glaciers from both sides of the range that straddles the equator. "The vast majority have retreated massively on the east side of Mount Stanley, they have practically all gone on Mount Baker, along with the river, and the Grant and Speke glaciers on Mount Speke are now tiny or have practically gone," says Thymann.

Using an old map to hack through overgrown trails at 4,500m, the group traversed the western, Congolese side of the range, where it is believed few, if any people have been for many years because of insurgency and war.

Perpetual cloud cover makes aerial or satellite photography of the range hard, but going on foot was revelatory, says Thymann. "It's like a white spot on the map, covered in cloud most of the year. It's very inaccessible. From the Congo side you can find glaciers unseen in 40 years. It was like rediscovering them. The west Stanley glacier has become detached from its accumulation zone, and the Edward "Y" glacier on Baker has lost an arm."

Analysis of satellite data in 2006 suggested that the combined area of the Rwenzori glaciers halved from around 2sq km to just under 1sq km between 1987 and 2006 and now is even less. "You can see clearly how the glaciers have retreated massively on the east side. The melt is super-intense. It was surprising to find some there at all. They probably don't have much time left," says Thymann.

Thymann heads Project Pressure, a collaboration of photographers, scientists, web developers and cartographers working to document the terminal decline of many of the world's glaciers and create a virtual record of ice on every continent.

Working with the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) and the Nasa in the US, they plan to cover all continents to create the first photographic, interactive "glacier atlas".
Since 2008, Project Pressure has recorded fast-shrinking glaciers in Argentina, Alaska and Montana, Iceland, Uganda, Nepal, Ecuador, Spain, Switzerland, Chile and Norway. Later this year, researchers will visit Greenland, Colombia and Bolivia, and expeditions are being planned to Kamchatka in the Russian far east and New Zealand.

But with tens of thousands of glaciers in nearly 50 countries, their record will be severely limited. "The criteria we use to choose the ones we survey is the speed at which they are receding, how well they have been previously documented and how important they are to local people. I think it's very important to have an artistic impression of what the world looked like before these glaciers are gone forever," says Thymann.

The work, which will not be formally launched until next year, is endorsed by scientists and feeds into research, but aims to be artistic.

"We know the Rwenzori glaciers are not going to last long. They are clearly disappearing fast and may be not much more than accumulated blocks of ice slowly atrophying. I can't see anything that will stop them disappearing, so what Project Pressure is doing is documenting what is there now," says hydrogeologist Richard Taylor of University College London, who has studied the Rwenzori icefield and visited the mountains six times.

"This is a last chance to see them. In years to come, the ice up there will be a fairy tale for the people who live [near Rwenzori]. This is the evidence of what was there, the proof. It is very helpful."

Taylor attributes most of the Rwenzori glacier melt to increased air temperature rather than lack of rainfall, which is widely thought to be responsible for the shrinkage of the glaciers on Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. "The rainfall there is many times that on Kilimanjaro. There, the evidence suggests that the glaciers are being starved of moisture, effectively desiccating them rather than melting."

Four-hundred metres below the disappearing icefield, the communities of coffee farmers say that climate change has disrupted rainfall patterns, giving them more intense rains and then drier spells. "But the dying glaciers are not responsible for their problems," says Taylor. "The glacial discharge from Rwenzori is trivial compared with the 3m of rainwater that falls and collects in the mountain's bogs and bamboo forests."

Written by John Vidal@The Guardian

Global Warming Threshold for Greenland Ice Sheet Collapse Reduced to 1.6 degrees C

New research from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Universidad Complutense de Madrid has lowered the best estimate for the irreversible collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet down to 1.6 °C, making the ice sheet more vulnerable than previously thought to global warming. The previous best estimate was 3.1 °C. As we currently have 0.8 °C of global warming, by the middle of the century we could easily pass this new threshold unleashing an ultimate sea level rise of several metres.

Already we have seen record summer melting in Greenland in 2010, and near record mass loss in 2011. According to NOAA the melt season in 2011 lasted up to 30 days longer than average and it affected 31 percent of the ice sheet surface, making 2011 one of just three years since 1979 where melt area exceeded 30 percent. Polar regions are warming much faster and to a greater degree than any other latitude on earth.

Previous best estimates of the threshold leading to complete melting were 3.1 °C (1.9-5.1 °C, 95% confidence interval) above the preindustrial climate temperatures. The study - Multistability and critical thresholds of the Greenland ice sheet (abstract) - says in part:

We estimate that the warming threshold leading to a monostable, essentially ice-free state is in the range of 0.8-3.2 °C, with a best estimate of 1.6 °C. By testing the ice sheet's ability to regrow after partial mass loss, we find that at least one intermediate equilibrium state is possible, though for sufficiently high initial temperature anomalies, total loss of the ice sheet becomes irreversible.

"The more we exceed the threshold, the faster it melts," says Alexander Robinson, lead-author of the study that has just been published in Nature Climate Change. If greenhouse-gas emissions continue on a business-as-usual approachm we could be looking at 8 degrees Celsius of global warming. This would result in 20 per cent of the ice sheet melting within 500 years and a complete loss in 2000 years, according to the study. 

"This is not what one would call a rapid collapse," says Robinson. "However, compared to what has happened in our planet's history, it is fast. And we might already be approaching the critical threshold."

"Our study shows that under certain conditions the melting of the Greenland ice sheet becomes irreversible. This supports the notion that the ice sheet is a tipping element in the Earth system," says team-leader Andrey Ganopolski of PIK. "If the global temperature significantly overshoots the threshold for a long time, the ice will continue melting and not regrow - even if the climate would, after many thousand years, return to its preindustrial state."

Feedbacks between the collapsing ice sheet and climate make this an important tipping element in the Earth climate system. The Ice sheet is over 3000 metres thick and elevated cooler altitudes. Once melting starts reducing the altitude of the ice sheet, higher temperatures will kick in accelerating the melting further. As ice melts and glacial water pools, the albedo of the ice sheet will change, absorbing more radiation with more warming.

The study utilised a computer simulation which incorporated the various climate feedback mechanisms of the ice sheet and the regional climate. The model correctly simulated observations of the ice sheet and the ice sheet behaviour in previous glacial cycles.

Global climate Negotiations since Copenhagen in 2009 have adopted 2°C as the 'safe' limit of global temperature increase to attempt to not surpass. However some climate scientists such as NASA climatologist James Hansen have been warning for some time that even 2°C is too high and that perhaps we should be aiming at a much lower limit. "The paleoclimate record reveals a more sensitive climate than thought, even as of a few years ago. Limiting human-caused warming to 2 degrees is not sufficient," said NASA climatologist James Hansen at the American Geophysical Union meeting on December 6 2011

Most of the small island states that are vulnerable to rising sea levels have voiced strong concern at the 2°C temperature limit as being too high and will result in their countries being innundated. The Climate Vulnerable Countries'Forum in 2009 called for "ambitious emission reduction targets consistent with limiting global average surface warming to well below 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and long-term stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at well below below 350 p.p.m."

This study confirms that 2°C is no longer safe in regard to maintaining the Greenland Ice Sheet, but is likely to lead to the eventual disintegration of the ice sheet raising sea levels by approximately seven metres.

Sources:

• Alexander Robinson, Reinhard Calov & Andrey Ganopolski, Nature Climate Change, 11 March 2012 - Multistability and critical thresholds of the Greenland ice sheet (abstract) doi:10.1038/nclimate1449
  
• Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) media release 11 March 2012 - Greenland ice sheet may melt completely with 1.6 degrees global warming
  
• Image - Greenland 2011 melt season anomaly from NOAA

Published originally@Climate Citizen Blog

Retreat of Columbia Glacier From Satellite

These two false-color thermal images taken by NASA satellites depict the rapid retreat of the Columbia Glacier in Alaska over the past 25 years. The top image shows the glacier’s terminus just north of Heather Island in 1986. By 2011, the terminus had retreated 12 miles up the inlet, and is identifiable in the bottom image, just below the “Main Branch” label, where the striped glacier surface meets the inlet. The blue in the water below the 2011 terminus is floating ice that has calved off the leading edge of the Columbia Glacier. (NASA Earth Observatory)

Climate Dewnial Crock 

Himalayan Scare From Melting Ice

                                                     A large glacial lake formed due to melting of the Imja Tso glacier in the Himalayas

Naysayers notwithstanding, new studies show that Himalayan glaciers are indeed melting possibly due to climate change.

The rate of their melting is not as alarming as projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 but is significant enough to seriously impact water availability in Asia in future.

The warning comes from a new study which has found that glaciers in the Himalayas and Karakoram occupy an area of 40,800 square kilometers. The new estimate is almost 20 percent lower compared to earlier projections.

Based on data relating to length, area, volume changes and mass budgets, the study shows that 0.4 per cent of glacier area is getting depleted every year.

The study, published in journal Science this week, puts at rest controversy generated due to projections about melting of Himalayan glaciers by 2035 as well as Indian studies that showed slower or zero rate of retreat of glaciers.

Now, scientists say that measuring horizontal retreat of glaciers could be misleading criterion of assessing health of a glacier. Many Indian glaciers are not retreating at terminus because of accumulation of debris but higher reaches of the very same glaciers may be melting.

That's why measuring overall ice mass is a better indicator of melting, scientists said. An average length decrease of 15 to 20 metres and area decrease of 0.1 to 0.6 per cent per year have been recorded in recent decades. Glacier surfaces have lowered by around 40 centimetres a year.

Glaciers in the Indian Himalayas are losing one metre of ice every year compared to 0.4 metre earlier.

'The loss in mass of glaciers in Indian Himalayas has significantly gone up 1998 onwards. 

Such loss is more sensitive to climate change than horizontal retreat,' Dr Anil Vishnu Kulkarni of Indian Institute of Science, one of the co-authors of the study explained.

Dr Kulkarni said initial studies have shown that black carbon - resulting from forest fires and burning of agricultural waste is one of the main contributors towards melting.

Transport of black carbon from lower reaches to mountain tops needs to be monitored regularly. Tobias Bolch of University of Zurich, who led the study, said 'majority of the Himalayan glaciers are shrinking, but much less rapidly than predicted earlier. But even a slow disappearance of glaciers could have serious consequences on water availability in Asia'.

In the medium term, greater variability in the seasonal water drainage is likely. Newly formed or rapidly growing glacial lakes also pose a threat to local populations 

By Dinesh C Sharma@Mail Online India

I'd like to refer the reader to these other articles previously publised: 

State of Himalayan Glaciers Less Alarming Than Feared

The Himalayas and Nearby Peaks Have Lost No Ice in Past 10 Years by Damian Carrington