Scientists are issuing fresh warnings about the rate at which Peru’s glaciers are retreating due to global warming. <br /><br /> According to government studies, Peruvian glaciers have shrunk by 40 percent in the past four decades and the melt-off has spawned hundreds of new, small, high-altitude lakes. <br /><br /> Glaciologists have installed thermal sensors to monitor glacier temperatures, in addition to measuring devices used to calculate glacier retreat.<br /><br /> “In the past 40 years, around 996 new lakes have appeared and this is easy to understand – when a glacier recedes, the first thing it leaves behind is a basin or a cup,” says glaciologist Nelson Santillana. <br /><br /> In 1970, more than 20,000 people were killed after an earthquake sent a glacier sliding into the highland town of Yungay.<br /><br /> Measures are now in place to prevent such tragedies. Monitoring stations equipped with surveillance cameras have been set up to warn of potential glacier-related natural disasters.<br /><br /> Students learn about evacuation routes in school and take part in avalanche and landslide evacuation drills.<br /><br /> “We mustn’t forget that we have tropical mountain glaciers, so our ice masses are located on surfaces that have almost vertical slopes. As a result, they are very susceptible to spilling over, they detach into the lakes that the glacier itself has formed – this destroys the lake which violently overflows and threatens to wipe out cities and infrastructure,” says Santillana. <br /><br /> Peru’s 2,679 glaciers are the source of the vast majority of the country’s drinking water. <br /><br /> Although glacial melt-off could boost supplies in some watersheds in the short-term, the fear is that, in the long term, it will diminish fresh water supplies in this fast-growing country.
