Late Night Climate Change Open Thread

From Mother Nature Network Blog:

Patagonia’s Jorge Montt glacier is melting faster than any other glacier in Chile, having shrunk by more than half a mile in just 12 months, researchers announced Wednesday. And they have 1,445 photos to prove it.

The glacier is located 1,000 miles south of Santiago in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, which covers 4.1 million acres in the Andes between Chile and Argentina. According to the Center for Scientific Studies in Valdivia, which has made a time-lapse video of the retreating glacier, Jorge Montt’s snout shrunk by 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) from January 2010 to February 2011.

“Patagonia has experienced climate change at rates much more moderate than those observed in the rest of the world,” glaciologist Andres Rivera says in a press release about the findings. “However, almost all the glaciers of the region have lost area. And Jorge Montt is the one that has the record retreat.”

….

That retreat has already altered the surrounding landscape, including the emergence of the 12-mile-long, 1,300-foot-deep fjord, which wasn’t previously listed on local maps. It also highlights the plight of glaciers across Patagonia — according to a study published in April, Patagonia’s glacial melting has “increased markedly” in recent decades, contributing about 10 percent of global sea-level rise related to mountain glaciers in the past 50 years. And as glaciologist Michel Barer tells the Associated Press, the problem of retreating glaciers “is really hot in South America” overall.

Pun intended? Watch the video: