Glaciologists Concerned By Melt Rates Of Chile's San Rafael Glacier

[hatrack]

"Leading UK scientists fear that one of South America’s leading natural tourist destinations, the San Rafael Glacier in Patagonian Chile, which is renowned for the spectacular way in which it releases icebergs into the San Rafael Laguna, may soon retreat to a point where it no longer reaches the sea. This, they warn, might remove one of the main reasons why thousands of tourists travel to this remote corner of Chile every year.

The glaciologists have been studying the San Rafael Glacier, one of the fastest-moving glaciers in the world, and others in the Northern Patagonian Icecap, for the past 13 years. Following their recent visit there on a research project with Raleigh International, Dr Neil Glasser and Dr Krister Jansson from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and Dr Stephan Harrison from Oxford University have revealed that the ice front of the glacier has receded over 1km since the early 1990s and iceberg calving activity has been dramatically reduced.

Dr Neil Glasser said, “The San Rafael glacier is an amazing natural phenomenon which flows from an altitude of 3000 metres to the San Rafael Laguna at sea level. In latitude terms an equivalent glacier in the northern hemisphere would flow into the Mediteranean. This means that the glacier is a very sensitive barometer of global climate change.”

EDIT

"The effect of this change on the San Rafael glacier will be dramatic. If the glacier retreats further up valley, it will cease to calve icebergs into the laguna, and one of the reasons why this area attracts so many tourists will be largely gone. As well as reflecting climate change, this may have knock on effects on the local economy." Dr Stephan Harrison from Oxford University said, "In recent years the glaciers of the Northern Patagonian Icecap have been melting rapidly as a result of Global warming, and the San Rafael Glacier has mirrored this retreat. The Patagonian icefields are losing ice more rapidly than any other comparable ice masses on earth and we must see this as the inevitable consequence of Global climate change," he added."

EDIT