…en Perú - Travel Culture History News

As more and more of Peru’s glacial peaks find themselves without their snowy white caps, one more can now be added to that growing list.

End of Andean winter, April 2008

Life on the barren Peruvian coast and dry ocean-facing Andean slopes is predicted to become just that much drier in the coming years. As the world heats up and the tropical glaciers of Peru’s Andes mountains disappear, the narrow green fertile valleys that are fed by their melt waters will also disappear. The rivers that run down to the Pacific ocean provide fresh water to the vast majority of the Peruvian population, those in the cities and those in the fields alike.

The Nevado Chachani, a volcano found in Arequipa, this November finally ran out of snow according to local authorities. Engineer Zacarías Madariaga of the region’s Environmental Health Agency, explains that the final decline in the amount of ice at the volcano’s peak started in September, picked up pace by October and the ice was completely gone by November. And just like that, in such a short period of time, the peak was without snow for the first time in its history.

Water crisis

Arequipa is this year facing a water crisis, with two of its four reservoirs empty. The other two hold a combined 73 million cubic metres, while the White City uses one million per day.

Sebastián Zúñiga Medina, regional director of SENAMHI, Peru’s meteorological and hydrological authority, explains that the period encompassing the last few months of 2007 were the hottest and driest recorded. This led to more water evaporation - an incredible 7 litres per any square metre of exposed water [per time period was not given by the source].

He goes on to explain that the Chilina river, on which the city of Arequipa sits, is likely to be affected as Chachani fuels the Chili river that is the Chilina’s source.

Both Madariaga and Zúñiga blame global warming for the loss of ice and impending droughts, but also blame local authorities who ignored several years of warnings. City authorities did nothing to reduce air pollution and ignored recommendations to re-forest surrounding hills to increase the humidity of the air.

For those who have been to Arequipa, Chachani is located to the left of the famous El Misti, and was always covered in snow even why El Misti wasn’t.

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According to some of the climate change models that were reported on the news here some time ago, predictions were made that showed in as little as 50 years the Amazon could dry up to become an arid savannah. The dense tropical forests would be replaced open grassland, and eventually, desert.

This process, according to some, has already started. 2005 saw rainfall in the Amazon at record low levels. One of the wettest places on earth suffered a drought, as seen in the photos above. Villagers were stranded at the banks of dry river beds, helicopters were used in Brasil to deliver food to those who had none. This year, as in 2005 and 2003, river levels were at near record lows. In Peru this has meant shipping lanes closing, or river trips that once took days now taking weeks.

So, when I heard of new research today, that stated that the rainforest could cope with higher temperatures and dryer weather better than we thought, I was happy to hear some good news.

The research showed that during the drought of 2005, rather than dying off, resilient plant life not only kept going but increased their rate of photosynthesis - becoming greener and absorbing more carbon dioxide - as a by product of trying to retain more water. This means the Amazon would be able to survive short term droughts.

But, with droughts occurring more frequently and for longer periods of time, its not all good news.

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Today the World Heritage Body rejected a motion calling for cuts in carbon emissions after heavy lobbying from the Bush administration.

There are 125 Unesco World Heritage sites that are under threat from global warming, some of which are in Peru, including the area I visited a couple of weeks ago - Huascaran National Park.

The World Heritage Body did not agree that the best way to protect the melting of the glaciers in the Peruvian Andes and in the Himalayas was to reduce the carbon emissions that cause global warming. This is despite producing a survey recently detailing the current damage caused to heritage sites by increased global temperatures.

Pastoruri, a small peak I climbed with Annett a couple of weeks ago has a glacier that has retreated by 200m in the past 10 years alone. Annett, who visited a few years ago noticed a stark difference.

Peru’s tropical glaciers are in particular danger from global warming due to the already fierce sun. Peru is home to more tropical glaciers than anywhere in the world. Peru has already lost 20% of all its glaciers, and will almost all within the next 7 years.

The natural process of melting glaciers also provides most Andean residents with their only source of water in the dry season, with the increased affect of global warming, many towns and city’s including the cities on the coast, will be without water for half of the year.

A further threat from glacial retreat is the increased risk of chunks of glacier cracking and breaking free then crushing whole cities, particularly when there are earthquakes in this earthquake-prone region. This is what happened to Yungay in 1970, which I also visited, where tens of thousands died.

It’s not all bad though, perhaps US oil money can pay for future disaster relief.

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