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This story originally Appear in Atlas Obscura And is Climate Service Desk cooperate.
In 1986, 21-year-old Alejandra Melfo moved to Mérida, Venezuela, the “City of Ever Snow”, where he studied physics at the University of the Andes. There, in the mountain town, she often looked at the horizon of the vast Sierra Nevada de Mérida: a huge, muscular, towering sky three miles above, covered by snow and wide glaciers. She fell in love as soon as she came here from Uruguay, a country without mountains.
As the years passed, Melford saw a change in the landscape. The two glaciers that can be seen from the city are receding rapidly. A huge crack appeared, breaking the ice into smaller pieces. The entire part of the glacier collapsed, exposing the rock below. By 1990, a mountain Pico La Concha had lost all its glaciers. In 2017, Venezuela’s highest peak, Pico Bolivar, followed closely behind. Today, Venezuela has only one glacier left: on the second highest peak, Pico Humboldt.
“This is an era [almost] It’s now completely complete,” said Melfo, a particle physicist at the University of the Andes, who has recently been working on projects involving biology and ecology, including the study of this last glacier.
Part of the reason why the Pico Humboldt glacier survived was that it was sheltered by the shadow of its peak-but only barely. In 1910, the glacier covered nearly 1.3 square miles.this Last measurement, 2019, Indicating that the glacier has shrunk to less than 0.02 square miles, or about the size of the Merida football field, less than 2% of its original size. If the glaciers disappear, Venezuela may become the first country in the world to have glaciers and then disappear all.
Experts say this is inevitable because climate intervention will not slow or stop it in time. Venezuela’s tropical glaciers-like other glaciers, In Colombia and other places, Peru, Kenya or Uganda-are particularly sensitive to climate change because they are already exposed to warm temperatures. By the end of this century, the last one will disappear. “Retreat, you can’t stop it, it’s impossible,” said Maximilino Bezada, a quaternary geologist at the University of Minnesota, who is not involved in current glacier research.
But not desperate, a group of Venezuelan scientists are looking for a rare opportunity. These glaciers have existed for hundreds of thousands of years, and the peaks they once covered are probably still covered by permanent ice and snow for thousands of years. Melfo said that this transition provides a unique window into how life emerges in essentially lifeless terrain, a process known as “primary inheritance.”
“[We’re] Witness the moment when these things change from one state to another. It’s very special,” she said. “It’s rare to see what’s happening on the geological scale in front of you. “
Scientific work began with a series of long and steep hikes. In 2019, Melfo and an interdisciplinary team including botanists, ecologists, and lichenologists made three trips to Pico Humboldt. At an altitude of more than 3 miles, carrying a lot of equipment and not having much experience in this condition, the team spent two to three days to reach the bottom of the Pichohumborg Glacier.
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