The world's fastest melting glaciers through satellite images 30 years apart

Two satellite images of a glacier in Patagonia (Chile) 30 years apart have shown that it loses half its length. According to scientists, maybe this is the fastest melting river in the world.

The left half of the glacier 30 years ago is still full of ice, the right side of the glacier has almost melted.

Hielo Patagónico Sur 12 Glacier (HPS-12), taken from satellite on January 27, 1985.

The glacier, called Hielo Patagónico Sur 12 (HPS-12) , is high in the Andes in Chile. According to an article in Nature Geoscience in September, researchers discovered that HPS-12 had lost its thickness and retreated to the mainland. According to their satellite data analysis, the glacier loses an average of 30 meters of ice each year, between 2000 and 2008, close to its end. According to the study's co-author, Etienne Berthier, a glacial researcher at the University of Toulouse in France, the fastest thawing occurs at 44 m in a year. The thinning part was recorded to completely dissolve in 2018.

Hielo Patagónico Sur 12 Glacier (HPS-12), taken from satellite in January 2019.

'As far as we know, this is actually the fastest observed loss rate for a glacier,' researcher Berthier told NASA's Earth Observatory.

The Earth Observatory published previously and now photographs on October 29, showing the staggering loss of ice. A satellite image taken on January 27, 1985 by a tool on the Landsat 5 satellite, shows river ice sweeping down from the southern slopes of Patagonia Icefield. A comparison shot of the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 in January 2019 shows a completely different world: The glacial hip cut deep into the fjord of it, exposes a large area of ​​bare stone.

Glaciers in Peru and Chile are known as 'tropical glaciers', which seem paradoxical because they are glaciers located in the middle of the earth instead of in the polar regions. Tropical glaciers are melting quickly. Research results in 2013 found that glaciers in the Andes Mountains have lost about 30% to 50% of their surface area since the 1970s. These glaciers have been damaged by the heat from above. due to the temperature of the air) and below (due to the temperature of the sea at the end of the river, or the final place of the glacial forward or backward).

According to Columbia University's Earth Academy, seasonal melting ice provides water for agriculture or industry, but the rapid melting of ice and the melting water will become 'killed' because they cause floods. floods and avalanches. If the ice disappears completely, the water in the Andes becomes increasingly scarce.

According to Berthier, because glaciers are so far away, they are difficult to study except by satellite. That's why the state of HPS-12 is being determined that the thinnest glacier on Earth comes with a suspicious star, because there may be other glaciers disappearing faster. that people don't notice.

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