White Mountains: Black Future.
I read the headline upside down, but I´m pretty sure thats what it said. I was in an internet cafe in Huaraz, and the clerk was reading a magazine/newspaper-type thing (like The Onion, except not funny).
Anyways, I didn´t get to read the article, but I can imagine what it said. Probably something to the effect of ¨...within this century, the Cordillera Blanca will lose all of its permanent snow and ice fields¨. Having spent the past month trekking and climbing through much of the ¨Blanca¨ in the Cordillera Blanca, it´s hard for me to imagine the disappearance of that much snow and ice.
But I did experience some of the glaical lost firsthand. Last week, I attempted (unsuccessfully) to climb Peru´s highest peak, Huascarán Sur (6768 m/22,000 ft -- more on this in a following post). On the way up, we past the so-called ¨Base camp¨ at 4200 m, the former site of the glacial terminus. These days, the glacier terminates around 4900 m -- representing about a 700 m loss since 1970. Doing the math very roughly (I had plenty of time to think about this on the way up), that´s about 700 m out of about 2500 m -- a little more than 1/4 of the glacier gone in the last 40 years.
This intrigued me, so when I got back I did ¨a google¨to see what I could find out about glacial loss in this part of the Andes. I found one link that has a couple of interesting before-and-after pictures of glaciers from around the world, as well as one that pins the retreat of tropical glaciers directly to temperature increase, and not decreasing precipitation (hint: it´s all about the isotopes...).
But one of the more interesting pieces of trivia I came across was from Wikipedia:
I read the headline upside down, but I´m pretty sure thats what it said. I was in an internet cafe in Huaraz, and the clerk was reading a magazine/newspaper-type thing (like The Onion, except not funny).
Anyways, I didn´t get to read the article, but I can imagine what it said. Probably something to the effect of ¨...within this century, the Cordillera Blanca will lose all of its permanent snow and ice fields¨. Having spent the past month trekking and climbing through much of the ¨Blanca¨ in the Cordillera Blanca, it´s hard for me to imagine the disappearance of that much snow and ice.
But I did experience some of the glaical lost firsthand. Last week, I attempted (unsuccessfully) to climb Peru´s highest peak, Huascarán Sur (6768 m/22,000 ft -- more on this in a following post). On the way up, we past the so-called ¨Base camp¨ at 4200 m, the former site of the glacial terminus. These days, the glacier terminates around 4900 m -- representing about a 700 m loss since 1970. Doing the math very roughly (I had plenty of time to think about this on the way up), that´s about 700 m out of about 2500 m -- a little more than 1/4 of the glacier gone in the last 40 years.
This intrigued me, so when I got back I did ¨a google¨to see what I could find out about glacial loss in this part of the Andes. I found one link that has a couple of interesting before-and-after pictures of glaciers from around the world, as well as one that pins the retreat of tropical glaciers directly to temperature increase, and not decreasing precipitation (hint: it´s all about the isotopes...).
But one of the more interesting pieces of trivia I came across was from Wikipedia:
Snow melt from the Cordillera Blanca has provided Peru with its year-round water supplies, while 80% of Peru's power comes from hydroelectricity. With global warming, the area of permanent ice pack shrank by about a third between the 1970s and 2006.Given that most of Peru´s population lies in the arid coastal regions, it is likely that the implications of retreating ice will be profound, and not just for mountaineering.
Posts
2 comments:
Sean,
Interesting post. Using google maps I am hovering a couple thousand feet over the Plaza de Armas at the moment. I'm curious about the River Santa. I assume it is entirely melt water and also assume it is the towns main (if not only) water source?
Yeah, the Rio Santa is the main river running through town, although there are many many different streams and human-constructed irrigation ditches that come down from the mountains. ...In the end, almost all of these rely on snowmelt as their ultimate source. For now, as the melt increases, river flows are apparently doing just fine, but it is possible that at some point they will begin to decline. ...If so, it will be a big deal, as you might imagine. If oil is black gold, then water is clear gold.
Post a Comment