"Bolivia's Chacaltaya glacier is gone"

From The Miami Herald:

CHACALTAYA, Bolivia -- -- If anyone needs a reminder of the on-the-ground impacts of global climate change, come to the Andes mountains in Bolivia. At 17,388 feet above sea level, Chacaltaya, an 18,000 year-old glacier that delighted thousands of visitors for decades, is gone, completely melted away as of some sad, undetermined moment early this year.

''Chacaltaya has disappeared. It no longer exists,'' said Dr. Edson Ramirez, head of an international team of scientists that has studied the glacier since 1991.

Chacaltaya (the name in Aymara means ''cold road'') began melting in the mid-1980s. Ramirez, the assistant director of the Institute of Hydraulics and Hydrology at the Universidad Mayor de San Andres in nearby La Paz, documented its disappearance in March.

Approximately 35 miles from La Paz, it takes an hour and a half to drive the gravel and rock road up tortuous switchbacks to the top of the mountain of the same name. Visitors on a clear day -- and there are many such days -- can see the Bolivian highland plain, or altiplano, thousands of feet below, and the nearby Huayna Potosi and Illimani mountains, part of the Cordillera Real de los Andes.

AN EARLY DEATH

Ten years ago Ramirez and his team of researchers concluded that the glacier would survive until 2015. But the rate of thaw increased threefold in the last decade, according to their studies. He believes the disappearance of Chacaltaya is an indication of the potent effects at higher elevations of the interaction of greenhouse gas accumulation and an increase in average global temperatures.

And he thinks other glaciers in the region also may be melting at a rate faster than previously known. Illimani, the colossal 21,200-foot mountain that looms over the city of La Paz and has served as the backdrop for postcard-perfect pictures since film was invented, is the home to several glaciers. They likely will melt completely within 30 years, he said.

While there is a consensus among most scientists that human reliance on fossil fuels is the main cause of higher carbon dioxide levels in the Earth's atmosphere, and that the so-called greenhouse gas effect has led to global warming and other climate changes, Ramirez sees the international controversies over the global warming issue as irrelevant, at least to Bolivians.

Here, it's not just an academic debate.

''It's very probable that other glaciers are disappearing faster than we thought,'' he said. Researchers fear that Chacaltaya's fate will be shared by other glaciers in other areas of Bolivia, and in Peru and Ecuador as well, he said.

In May, the members of Ramirez's research team will gather here to honor the fallen glacier and to commemorate the end of 18 years of work....