But not a drop to drink

Text by Olivia Verkade
Photography by Daniel Beltra / Greenpeace

Twenty thousand years ago, Patagonia was covered by ice. Nowadays, the principal vestiges are the great South and North Patagonian Ice Fields. Unique in its beauty, the largest contiguous ice field in the Southern Hemisphere, with the exception of Antarctica, is the Southern Patagonian Ice Field (SPI). It is also the fastest melting. Over the last forty years, the SPI - an area of 13,000km - has diminished by about 500km. The phenomenon is a consequence of global warming and decreasing rain. Aside from Antarctica, this region also represents the main reserve of fresh water in South America, on which millions depend.

Changing Faces
Jorge Quinteros looks into the distance at a sight he has not seen for 50 years. Squinting into the sunlight, dazzled by the snow, he turns around slowly, the ice crunching beneath his feet as he does so, and drinks in the view: the Patagonian Andes of southern Chile. The mountains lie in the distance, glittering in the sun as they have for millennia. But Quinteros’ old eyes are drawn again and again to the feature dominating his landscape: the glacier.

The last time he was here was in 1955, climbing that same glacier as a young man. Much has changed since then, more than he would have imagined. He is older, of course, and the world is faster, more crowded. But the glacier he expected to remain untouched has been transformed dramatically.

“It has changed so much,” he says, unable to take his gaze off the glacier. “I mean, it was completely different fifty years ago, there are parts that have completely disappeared. The structure has changed, and it has retreated so much…I can hardly believe…” his voice tails off.

At 71, Jorge Quinteros now lives in Santiago de Chile and works at the Chilean Hydrology Department. When he was 21 he was a mountaineer, having fallen in love with the snowy mountains around Santiago when he was a child.

In 1955, he was given his first chance to explore Patagonia. The Royal Geographical Society invited him to go on an expedition to one of the glaciers in the South Patagonian Ice Field, the HPS31 (Hielo Patagónico Sur 31). Together with Harold Tilman, British Army officer turned explorer, he walked across 60km of ice in 27 days, without skis or sledges. Now, for the first time since that journey, he has returned. But what he has found is not what he remembers; the glacier has changed beyond recognition.

“The scenery is so different. We camped at the top of this hill with Tilman,” says Quinteros, pointing up towards the crest of the hill. “The glacier covered the place where we are standing now. It was easy to reach the glacier then, you just walked on to it. Now you’d have to jump 300 or 400 metres or take a helicopter.”

Ice on the Rocks
The world’s glaciers cover 10% of the earth’s land surface and represent 90% of the planet’s fresh water supply. They also help to maintain the balance of climate patterns, by cooling the planet with water flow and air draught. If all the world’s glaciers were to melt completely, the earth’s sea levels would rise between 60 and 70 metres and the world map as we know it would change dramatically.

Back in 1990, Professor Wilfreid Haeberli, a Swiss glaciologist, was one of the first to raise the alarm: "... so far the length reduction of mountain glaciers still remains the most detectable, unequivocal proof from cold regions that fast and worldwide climatic change is taking place."

Chris Folland works for the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Research and echoes Haeberli: “What we’ve seen is that the large glaciers around the world in both hemispheres – South America, Europe, the Himalayas – have been retreating over the last 100 years.”

The question is, why? What is beyond dispute is that the earth is heating up. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a panel of the world’s leading independent scientists set up by the United Nations in 1988, released a report in 2001 in which they predicted that the average global temperature increase over the next 100 years would be between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius.

"The projected rate of warming is much larger than the observed changes during the 20th century and is very likely without precedent during the last 10,000 years." The difference between the present average global temperature and the last ice age is only five degrees Celsius.

“So what?” you may ask. “Why does it matter if the earth is heating up? Most of us would welcome a bit of Mediterranean warmth. It’s probably natural anyway, like the ice ages. Most likely a perfectly normal solar wobble or something.”

Well, no.

The IPCC stated in 2001 that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities." The last century has seen the biggest increase in industry, technology and use of fossil fuels since humans first crawled from the slime and invented the campfire. The greatest advances of the twentieth century were unfortunately coupled with the release of unprecedented levels of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere and a ‘hothousing’ of the planet.

Leaving aside for a moment the impact of these ‘activities’ on the oceans, the poles, desertification, flora and fauna (including we humans), the impact on glaciers alone is bad enough. For instance, in areas like Central Asia and Argentina, increases in future glacial runoff are likely to increase the risk of rivers flooding and landslides. Summer water resources in other regions are likely to diminish as glaciers and meltwater disappear, seriously affecting places like Peru’s capital Lima, a city of 7 million people.

It is also estimated that the loss of mountain glaciers has already caused an increase of between 2cm and 5cm in sea levels during the twentieth century. The IPCC estimates that loss of glaciers and small ice caps would contribute a further 16cm to 50cm to sea levels by 2100. It does not take a glaciologist to see what impact this will have on coastal and small island communities.

The end of the world
“The hill we are camping on right now was covered with ice back in 1955,” says Jorge Quinteros. With two days of camping in the rain behind him, he looks remarkably good-humoured and fit. “I had to sleep in wet clothes last night, but it was worth it just to be here.

The glacier HPS31, cracked with crevasses, flows out into Fjord Peel on the west coast of Chile. In fact, most of the coastal glaciers are retreating as rapidly as those inland, such as the Torres del Paine national park.

The ice fields in Patagonia are dominated by 'calving' glaciers which have different dynamics from glaciers whose front ends melt on land. They are more sensitive to climate change once pushed out of equilibrium. The ice fields have lost 42 cubic kilometres of ice every year for the last seven years. That is equivalent to the volume of ten thousand large football stadiums the size of Wembley stadium. Currently, the Patagonian ice fields contribute to nine percent of the global sea level rise caused by melting mountain glaciers.

Jose Pera, a mountain guide from Argentina, accompanied Mr. Quinteros on his trip back to the glacier. Although he had never been to that specific area, he knows a lot about glaciers. And his observations can provide a good counterpoint to those of Quinteros who is some forty years his senior.

Most interesting are the old black-and-white faded photographs which Quinteros has taken with him. He took them back in 1955. Comparing Quinteros’ old photographs with the present-day reality comes as a shock, even to Jose Pera who is used to seeing glaciers change rapidly over just a few months. “I think they show clearly how much this glacier has lost during all those years. This is drinking water that the glacier loses every year. And the sea level will also have risen. I don’t see how this could have been caused by anything other than humans. Glaciers are so sensitive to any changes in the climate – and you see what has happened.”

Jorge Quinteros and Jose Pera have different jobs and experiences. But they both share a love for Patagonia and mountains; they both work in some way with mountains and glaciers; they have both noticed changes in the glaciers and cannot quite believe what they have seen. Add their observations to the scientific measurements of glaciologists and climatologists, and you have a picture of a rather bleak future. Even Patagonia, here at the end of the world, cannot escape the problems being caused by the world’s insatiable appetite for oil, coal and gas.

Yet there is still hope. We should be putting all our resources into making sure the causes of climate change diminish and cease. It is still possible, as long as stakeholders can be convinced that if they continue the way they are going, they may not have a stake to hold for much longer. Banging the drum about solar energy, wind energy, recycling and Greenfreeze technology is not enough by itself. The world’s leaders must find the political will to look up from the ground at their feet and fix their eyes on the millions of lives that are at risk.

Patagonia - Evidence of Climate Change
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