Since 1870, Volume Of N. Patagonian Ice Field Down 100 km3, S. Field Off 500 km3; Cool Time-Lapse
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Earlier this year, glaciologist Neil Glasser of Aberystwyth University, UK, and colleagues estimated that since 1870 the Northern Patagonian Icefield has lost more than 100 cubic kilometres of ice, and that the Southern Patagonian Icefield had lost more than 500 cubic kilometres since 1650. In both case, the melt rate had speeded up considerably in recent decades1.
The San Rafael Glacier, for example, about 55 kilometres southwest of Exploradores, has retreated 12 kilometres over the past 136 years, and is still shrinking. And earlier this month, scientists from the CECS released time-lapse photos showing that the Jorge Montt glacier in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field retreated by about one kilometre between February 2010 and January 2011.
Matsumoto's journey to the Exploradores Glacier — one of the most accessible of Chile's glaciers — involves a six-hour drive from Coyhaique to a small shelter about one kilometre from the glacier. Then follows an hour’s walk through evergreen forests and over the moraine of rubble at the foot of the glacier. Eventually, the sliding soil and rock gives way to the ice of the glacier itself.
Over the course of the day he downloads data from monitoring stations on to his laptop. One station records precipitation; another, lying in the glacier's outlet stream, known locally as the Deshielo River, records data about its melt water. The information about these "plains of snow", as the region’s original settlers called them, "will help to understand the dynamics of the glacier and, by extension, how it responds to climate change”, says Matsumoto.
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http://www.nature.com/news/taking-the-pulse-of-a-shrinking-glacier-1.9713