The New York Times
As Andean Glaciers Shrink, Water Worries Grow
By JUAN FORERO
HACALTAYA MOUNTAIN, Bolivia — From the top of this snow-capped peak 17,400 feet up, the surrounding Royal Range looks as healthy as ever: deep, glittering snow and a thick covering of glaciers as far as the eye can see.
But as Eulalio Gonzales, a veteran mountain guide, surveyed from the craggy peak overlooking Bolivia's windswept highlands, all he saw were remnants, fading and shrinking fast.
This mountain's glacier, boasting the world's highest ski slope, has been melting so steadily that scientists predict its demise in a decade. The Zongo glacier on the nearby mountain of Huayna Potosi is retreating by 10 yards a year.
On a third peak, the 18,000-foot Condoriri, the glacier that supplies the largest reservoir in the Bolivian highlands is shriveling so fast that scientists fear a scarcity of drinking water in the decades to come.
"Each day we are more and more worried because these are the waters we drink from, but there is retreat all around," said Mr. Gonzales, peering through sunglasses under a bright sun and springlike climate. "This was so much different before — there was just much more snow and ice."
In a phenomenon scientists here and abroad call a calamity in the making, the glaciers of the central Andes are vanishing because of global warming driven at least in part by pollution.
Their disappearance, scientists now say, is nearly unavoidable and could lead to water shortages in places like Bolivia and Peru that depend on glaciers and the rain and snow that fall on the mountains for water for drinking, irrigating fields and generating electricity.
"For our future, it is worrisome because we may not have enough water," said Ronaldo Maldonado, the government's chief meteorologist. "Demand could grow, but supply could be less. If this happens we could be in a tremendous crisis."
Shrinking glaciers are a worldwide phenomenon, with great slices of snow and ice disappearing every year from the Austrian Alps to Glacier National Park in Montana. But the glaciers of the tropics — the vast majority in the Andes, stretching from Venezuela to Bolivia — are losing ground the fastest.
They are smaller to begin with and are located in a region that is more sensitive to climate change — and the climate has changed.
In Bolivia the temperature rose by 1 degree centigrade in the last century, mirroring the rise in some other parts of the world, said Robert Gallaire, a hydrologist with the Institute of Research for Development, a French scientific organization studying glaciers here.
At the same time, less rain and snow are falling in the area around La Paz, with the average annual rainfall dropping to 17.88 inches in the 1990's from 22.4 inches in the 1980's, according to measurements at Milluni Lagoon at the foot of Huayna Potosi.
Scientists attribute the unseasonably dry years to El Niño, a weather phenomenon generated by warm Pacific currents off the South American coast that has struck numerous times in the last two decades.
The changes are already being noticed by the people who live in the mountains, raising anxieties. "It is worrisome," said Angel Quisverte, 55, a potato farmer who lives on the north side of Zongo, "because if there are no snows, then there is no life."
He said he feared for the future of agriculture in the green valley where he lives. "All the mountains here had snows before, but now it's melting," he said. "Ten years ago I started to see it — and every year it keeps going down and down."
The climatic changes have been disastrous throughout the region for mountain glaciers, which have been vanishing at a particularly rapid pace in recent years.
At the huge Quelccaya Ice Cap, which stretches across Peru, the largest glacier, Qori Kalis, is retreating at a rate 44 times as fast today as it was from 1963 to 1978, when American scientists determined it was melting by about four yards a year.
Glaciers in Venezuela are nearly extinct, and in Bolivia the mass of glaciers and snowcaps has shrunk by 60 percent since 1978, according to government estimates.
In all, according to the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, Andean glaciers have retreated by as much as 25 percent in the last 30 years.
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