The heat waves in the center and south of our country demonstrate that climate change is real. Not only people are affected by high temperatures, but the environment is also affected. Likewise, our glacier heritage, guardian of millenary waters and sustenance of our daily life, has been damaged.Several causes of glacial retreat exist, such as rare winter precipitation and high temperatures. According to the 2014 cadaster, which compared satellite images from 2000 and 2002, the increase in temperatures is the main cause. A new cadaster is currently in a functionality test and will be compared with images from 2015.The ice masses in the central zone, located between the valley and the mountains of the Río Maipo basin, have experienced significant retreats in their fronts and higher levels of thinning, which causes the cold mass to shatter and fragment. Records between 2000 and 2015 reveal a thinning between 1 to 2 meters per year. Clear examples of this unfortunate phenomenon are the El Plomo glacier, which decreases its thickness by almost one meter per year; the El Bello glacier, which suffers from the same problem; and the San Francisco glacier, whose thinning fraction reaches 1.87 meters yearly.The same happens in the Río Tinguiririca basin, in the sixth region, where they are thinning at a rate of more than 2 meters per year. At the same time, glacier fronts are retreating, such as the Olivares Alfa glacier (47.4 m/year); Esmeralda glacier (23 m/year), and El Plomo glacier (19.1 m/year). The same happens in the Río Aconcagua basin with the Juncal glacier, with a decrease in both its southern and northern parts of 24 and 17.9 meters per year, respectively.Changes in the spatial extent of Olivares Alfa glaciers between 1955 and 2013. Source: Jeppe Malmros et al. (2016)The area covered by glaciers in the Río Maipo basin is approximately 365 km2 which represents 7.5 % of the total area.The 2014 inventory indicates 24,114 glaciers in our territory, covering 23,641km2, and 76 % of them are in Patagonia; whose rate of retreat leads the world ranking.It’s a concrete fact that the large ice masses are increasingly losing territory, being the ones that cooperate with the primary function of snow accumulation in winter, to release it later in the season of rare rainfall. Climate change is already revealing the symptoms of a serious disease for our territory and the world. It’s everyone’s responsibility to face a heartbreaking scenario, which seems to be imminent. For this, we must apply preventive measures quickly, if we want future generations to know and marvel at the majesty of our natural architecture.San Francisco glacier, Marcos Cole, 2016Bello Glacier, Thomas Shaw, 2018Bello glacier, Thomas Shaw, 2018Yeso glacier, Thomas Shaw, 2018Yeso glacier, Thomas Shaw, 2018Source:
El Mercurio, Economía y Negocios: https://digital.elmercurio.com/2019/02/17/C/CD3HNE4C#zoom=page-width (last view: February 19, 2019) [Chilean newspaper]
Barcaza, G. et al. (2017) ‘Glacier inventory and recent glacier variations in the Andes of Chile, South America’, Annals of Glaciology, 58, pp. 166–180. doi: 10.1017/aog.2017.28.
Farias-Barahona, D. et al. (2019) ‘Geodetic Mass Balances and Area Changes of Echaurren Norte Glacier (Central Andes, Chile) between 1955 and 2015’, Remote Sensing, 11(260), pp. 1–17. doi: 10.3390/rs11030260.
Malmros, J. K. et al. (2016) ‘Glacier area changes in the central Chilean and Argentinean Andes 1955-2013/14’, Journal of Glaciology, 62(232), pp. 391–401. doi: 10.1017/jog.2016.43.
Inventario de glaciares chilenos, Dirección General de Aguas (DGA): http://www.dga.cl/administracionrecursoshidricos/Inventario_glaciares/Paginas/default.aspx (last view: February 19, 2019) [Chilean glaciers inventory, General Directorate of water]
