Giant ice chunks break more often at perito moreno
For years, visitors have watched in awe as blocks of ice - some the size of a 20-story building - collapse from Argentina’s Perito Moreno glacier.
But recently, the size of the ice chunks breaking off - a process called "calving" - has alarmed local guides and glaciologists.
The face of the Perito Moreno glacier had for decades held more or less steady... bucking the trend in recent decades by maintaining its mass even as warmer climates spurred faster glacial melting worldwide.
But Pablo Quinteros, an official tourist guide at Los Glaciares National Park, says there's been a recent shift.
He says it was once rare to see icebergs of this size breaking off. But in the last four to six years, it's become a common sight.
Glaciologist Lucas Ruiz says the face of the Perito Moreno glacier, which flows down Andean peaks into Lake Argentina, had unusually been more or less in the same position for 80 years.
"The thing with Perito Moreno is that it took a while, so to speak, to feel the effects of climate change. However, the changes we are seeing today clearly show that this balance of forces, or this balance of mass between the upper part that accumulates snow and the lower part that melts ice and calves’ icebergs, has been disrupted, and today the glacier is losing both in thickness and area."
He said that the glacier could rebound as it has done before, but that for the moment it was losing between three and six-and-a-half feet of water equivalent per year.
If not reversed, Ruiz says it could lead to a situation where the loss accelerates.
For now, the glacier remains a spectacle for travelers like Giovanna Machado, who came from Brazil to see it up close.
