The snowcapped skyline of the Andes is beating a hasty retreat. Since the mid-1970s, the area covered by glaciers in Peru’s Cordillera de Vilcanota range has nearly halved, with most losses occurring below 5000 metres.
Using Landsat images taken every decade, glaciologists at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil measured the snowline of the southern Peruvian range and found the ice caps that feed the glaciers shrinking.
Overall, they found that 48 per cent of ice had disappeared since 1975, with 81 per cent vanishing in areas below 5000 metres. As global warming continues, such tropical glaciers are likely to disappear.