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The collapse of the glacial bridge of Patagonia, Perito Moreno is dominating news in Argentina and here in South America. The famous 60 meter high arc of ice broke on Wednesday in the middle of winter, a phenomenon experts link to climate change.
Patagonia is one of the main tourist destinations of Argentina. Its also one of the largest reserves of ‘sweet water’ in the world.
Such collapses are frequently speculated about and anticipated, with thousands of tourists flooding to expected collapses when they are predicted to occur. However the surprise is that this collapse occurred in winter. The most recent ones, in 1988 and 2004, occurred in summer. The most recent to occur in winter was in 1951 and in 1917.
Only 300 tourists and others watching over the internet, were witness to this collapse.
“Its rare that a process with these characteristics would occur [in winter],” the director of the National Park of Glaciers, Carlos Corvalan, said. That the collapse didn’t occur in its natural cycle, is been seen as a consequence of global warming.
“The increase in temperature affects the resistance of the ice,” he said.
The immense masses of polar ice are changing and in the last 20 years, according to the Argentinean Institute of Snow, Glaciers and Environmental Sciences, the glaciers along Patagonia have shrunk in size by 10-20%.
Here in the Andes of Venezuela, where the climate is perfect (constantly around 26 degrees, with just a rainy season and a drier period), it is commonly said that ‘we are not affected by climate change but we can see its affects.’ One of the main tourist attractions here is the Bolivar Peak, the highest point of the Andes in Venezuela, reached by the longest and highest cable car in the world, and previously covered in snow. Over the past 2 years alone the amount of snow on this peak has diminished to almost none.
photo credits: CampamentoNomade on Flickr and Fotografias.net
