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Euronews
4 days ago
- Science
- Euronews
Argentina's once stable Perito Moreno Glacier is now melting fast
An iconic Argentinian glacier, long thought one of the few on Earth to be relatively stable, is now undergoing its 'most substantial retreat in the past century,' according to new research. The Perito Moreno Glacier in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field for decades has been wedged securely in a valley. But it's started losing contact with the bedrock below, causing it to shed more ice as it inches backwards. It's a change, illustrated in dramatic time-lapse photos since 2020, that highlights 'the fragile balance of one of the most well-known glaciers worldwide," write the authors of the study in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. They expect it to retreat several more kilometres in the next few years. 'We believe that the retreat that we are seeing now, and why it is so extreme in terms of values that we can observe, is because it hasn't been climatically stable for a while now, for over a decade,' said Moritz Koch, a doctoral student at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and one of the study authors. 'Now we see this very delayed response to climate change as it is slowly but surely detaching from this physical pinning point in the central part of the glacier.' Koch and his team did extensive field work to get the data for their calculations. To measure ice thickness, they flew over the glacier in a helicopter with a radar device suspended beneath. They also used sonar on the lake and satellite information from above. It is hard to predict when glaciers will fall apart Every year, hundreds of thousands of people visit Glaciar Perito Moreno, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981. It's a site known to 'calve' ice chunks that fall into Lake Argentino below. The basic physics of climate change and glaciers is intuitive: heat melts ice, and global warming means more and faster glacial melting, said Richard Alley, an ice scientist at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved in the study. But much like a dropped coffee mug, it's harder to predict when and exactly how they're going to break apart. He said people who deny climate change frequently point to anomalies like Perito Moreno, which for a long time wasn't retreating when most other glaciers were. Even without climate change, glaciers fluctuate a bit. But if the climate were stable, ordinary accumulation of snow and ice would offset the melting and movement, said Erin Pettit, a glaciologist at Oregon State University who was also not involved in the study. Why are melting glaciers a problem? Glacial melting, especially at the poles, matters because it could cause catastrophic sea level rise, harming and displacing people living in coastal and island areas. While the changes can be locally spectacular in places like Patagonia, Alley said the bigger concern is using studies like this one to understand 'what might happen to the big guys' in Antarctica. But even smaller glaciers have a powerful presence in communities, Pettit said. Ice has carved out many of the landscapes people love today, and they are intimately tied to many cultures around the world. Glaciers can be a source of drinking water or, when they collapse, a destructive force, leaving mudslides in their wake. 'We are losing these little bits of ice everywhere,' Pettit said. 'Hopefully we're slowly gaining more respect for the ice that was here, even if it's not always there.'
Perth Now
7 days ago
- Science
- Perth Now
Patagonia glacier melting faster than expected: study
An iconic Argentinian glacier, long thought one of the few on Earth to be relatively stable, is now undergoing its "most substantial retreat in the past century," according to new research. The Perito Moreno Glacier in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field for decades has been wedged securely in a valley. But it's started losing contact with the bedrock below, causing it to shed more ice as it inches backward. While the glacier only lost an average of 34cm in thickness per year between 2000 and 2019, it shrank between 5.5m and 6.5m per year from 2019 to 2024, according to a study led by the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg's Moritz Koch. In some areas, the world famous glacier retreated by more than 800m over a five-year span to 2024. It's a change, illustrated in dramatic time lapse photos since 2020, that highlights "the fragile balance of one of the most well-known glaciers worldwide," write the authors of the study in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. They expect it to retreat several more kilometres in the next few years. "We believe that the retreat that we are seeing now, and why it is so extreme in terms of values that we can observe, is because it hasn't been climatically stable for a while now, for over a decade," said Koch. "Now we see this very delayed response to climate change as it is slowly but surely detaching from this physical pinning point in the central part of the glacier." Koch and his team did extensive field work to get the data for their calculations. To measure ice thickness, they flew over the glacier in a helicopter with a radar device suspended beneath. They also used sonar on the lake and satellite information from above. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people visit Glaciar Perito Moreno, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981. It's a site known to "calve" ice chunks that fall into Lake Argentino below. The basic physics of climate change and glaciers are intuitive: heat melts ice, and global warming means more and faster glacial melting, said Richard Alley, an ice scientist at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved in the study. But much like a dropped coffee mug, it's harder to predict when and exactly how they're going to break apart. He said people who deny climate change frequently point to anomalies like Perito Moreno, which for a long time wasn't retreating when most other glaciers were. Even without climate change, glaciers fluctuate a bit. But if the climate were stable, ordinary accumulation of snow and ice would offset the melting and movement, said Erin Pettit, a glaciologist at Oregon State University who was also not involved in the study. Glacial melting, especially at the poles, matters because it could cause catastrophic sea level rise, harming and displacing people living in coastal and island areas. While the changes can be locally spectacular in places like Patagonia, Alley said the bigger concern is using studies like this one to understand "what might happen to the big guys" in Antarctica. with DPA
San Francisco Chronicle
07-08-2025
- Science
- San Francisco Chronicle
Scientists thought this Argentine glacier was stable. Now they say it's melting fast
An iconic Argentinian glacier, long thought one of the few on Earth to be relatively stable, is now undergoing its 'most substantial retreat in the past century,' according to new research. The Perito Moreno Glacier in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field for decades has been wedged securely in a valley. But it's started losing contact with the bedrock below, causing it to shed more ice as it inches backward. It's a change, illustrated in dramatic timelapse photos since 2020, that highlights 'the fragile balance of one of the most well-known glaciers worldwide," write the authors of the study in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. They expect it to retreat several more kilometers in the next few years. 'We believe that the retreat that we are seeing now, and why it is so extreme in terms of values that we can observe, is because it hasn't been climatically stable for a while now, for over a decade,' said Moritz Koch, a doctoral student at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and one of the study authors. 'Now we see this very delayed response to climate change as it is slowly but surely detaching from this physical pinning point in the central part of the glacier.' Koch and his team did extensive field work to get the data for their calculations. To measure ice thickness, they flew over the glacier in a helicopter with a radar device suspended beneath. They also used sonar on the lake and satellite information from above. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people visit Glaciar Perito Moreno, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981. It's a site known to 'calve' ice chunks that fall into Lake Argentino below. The basic physics of climate change and glaciers are intuitive: heat melts ice, and global warming means more and faster glacial melting, said Richard Alley, an ice scientist at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved in the study. But much like a dropped coffee mug, it's harder to predict when and exactly how they're going to break apart. He said people who deny climate change frequently point to anomalies like Perito Moreno, which for a long time wasn't retreating when most other glaciers were. Even without climate change, glaciers fluctuate a bit. But if the climate were stable, ordinary accumulation of snow and ice would offset the melting and movement, said Erin Pettit, a glaciologist at Oregon State University who was also not involved in the study. Glacial melting, especially at the poles, matters because it could cause catastrophic sea level rise, harming and displacing people living in coastal and island areas. While the changes can be locally spectacular in places like Patagonia, Alley said the bigger concern is using studies like this one to understand 'what might happen to the big guys' in Antarctica. But even smaller glaciers have a powerful presence in communities, Pettit said. Ice has carved out many of the landscapes people love today, and they are intimately tied to many cultures around the world. Glaciers can be a source of drinking water or, when they collapse, a destructive force leaving mudslides in their wake. 'We are losing these little bits of ice everywhere,' Pettit said. 'Hopefully we're slowly gaining more respect for the ice that was here, even if it's not always there.'
New York Times
07-08-2025
- Science
- New York Times
A Famously Stable Glacier in Argentina Suddenly Looks Anything But
For decades, the Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina has looked like an outlier as so many of the world's other great ice masses melt and waste away. The glacier's snout — its mighty leading edge — lengthened and shortened, but not by much, at least by glacial standards. Its surface didn't thin greatly. In fact, it may have even gotten a little thicker. All that seems to be changing. The Perito Moreno has been thinning at a sharply accelerated rate since 2019, scientists reported on Thursday. And if the thinning doesn't slow, it could kick-start a series of changes that might cause the ice to shrink even faster. 'Everything that we can see and know lets us believe that irreversible and large-scale glacier retreat is imminent,' said Moritz Koch, a doctoral student in geography and geosciences at Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. If Mr. Koch and his colleagues' predictions, published Thursday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, are borne out, they imply a momentous change of fortune for one of the world's most beloved glaciers. The Perito Moreno is the centerpiece of Los Glaciares National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site visited by hundreds of thousands of people every year. The glacier, a river of craggy ice nearly 20 miles long, pours out of the cloud-swathed southern Andes like a mirage. Tourists gather at its side to watch huge chunks of bluish ice peel off and plunge, with a thunderous splash, into the lake at the glacier's edge. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Winnipeg Free Press
07-08-2025
- Science
- Winnipeg Free Press
Scientists thought this Argentine glacier was stable. Now they say it's melting fast
An iconic Argentinian glacier, long thought one of the few on Earth to be relatively stable, is now undergoing its 'most substantial retreat in the past century,' according to new research. The Perito Moreno Glacier in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field for decades has been wedged securely in a valley. But it's started losing contact with the bedrock below, causing it to shed more ice as it inches backward. It's a change, illustrated in dramatic timelapse photos since 2020, that highlights 'the fragile balance of one of the most well-known glaciers worldwide,' write the authors of the study in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. They expect it to retreat several more kilometers in the next few years. 'We believe that the retreat that we are seeing now, and why it is so extreme in terms of values that we can observe, is because it hasn't been climatically stable for a while now, for over a decade,' said Moritz Koch, a doctoral student at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and one of the study authors. 'Now we see this very delayed response to climate change as it is slowly but surely detaching from this physical pinning point in the central part of the glacier.' Koch and his team did extensive field work to get the data for their calculations. To measure ice thickness, they flew over the glacier in a helicopter with a radar device suspended beneath. They also used sonar on the lake and satellite information from above. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people visit Glaciar Perito Moreno, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981. It's a site known to 'calve' ice chunks that fall into Lake Argentino below. The basic physics of climate change and glaciers are intuitive: heat melts ice, and global warming means more and faster glacial melting, said Richard Alley, an ice scientist at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved in the study. But much like a dropped coffee mug, it's harder to predict when and exactly how they're going to break apart. He said people who deny climate change frequently point to anomalies like Perito Moreno, which for a long time wasn't retreating when most other glaciers were. Even without climate change, glaciers fluctuate a bit. But if the climate were stable, ordinary accumulation of snow and ice would offset the melting and movement, said Erin Pettit, a glaciologist at Oregon State University who was also not involved in the study. Glacial melting, especially at the poles, matters because it could cause catastrophic sea level rise, harming and displacing people living in coastal and island areas. While the changes can be locally spectacular in places like Patagonia, Alley said the bigger concern is using studies like this one to understand 'what might happen to the big guys' in Antarctica. But even smaller glaciers have a powerful presence in communities, Pettit said. Ice has carved out many of the landscapes people love today, and they are intimately tied to many cultures around the world. Glaciers can be a source of drinking water or, when they collapse, a destructive force leaving mudslides in their wake. Wednesdays What's next in arts, life and pop culture. 'We are losing these little bits of ice everywhere,' Pettit said. 'Hopefully we're slowly gaining more respect for the ice that was here, even if it's not always there.' ___ Follow Melina Walling on X @MelinaWalling and Bluesky @ ___ The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
