A Shadow You Soon Will Be<\/h2>\n
Unless this trend is reverted,\u00a0this glacier might disappear in the next few decades<\/strong>, as warned by the environmental organization\u00a0Greenpeace<\/strong>, based on astudy in which it was determined -through photographic evidence- that the ice mass had lost 50 m (164 ft) of its height and one kilometer (0.6 mi) of depth in relation to 1930.<\/strong><\/p>\n Villalba<\/strong>, who participated in the Greenpeace expedition in which the Viedma Glacier\u2019s ice mass loss was documented, believes that\u00a0\u201cin the last 20 years, the glacier extension along Patagonia has been reduced by 10 or 20 per cent\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n According to BAS, six ice layers have already disappeared on the same spot of the continent, but Wilkins\u2019 is the largest one threatened so far. It had\u00a0remained stable throughout last century, but it began to recede in 1990.\u00a0<\/strong>Scientists do not believe that it will be able to survive for much longer. According to BAS expert David Vaughan, \u201cthe ice cap is now hanging by a thread\u201d.<\/p>\n In the last 50 years, the region has registered the\u00a0world\u2019s highest temperature rise<\/strong>, with an average of half a degree by decade.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The receding\u00a0Viedma Glacier\u00a0and the loosening of a 415 square km (160 sq mi) iceberg from\u00a0Antarctica\u00a0have reactivated worldwide alarm on climate change effects and brought to the table the issue of man\u2019s moral responsibility for this process. Countries’ energetic and industrial needs cause a huge environmental damage, which is becoming increasingly evident in such climate phenomena… Read on<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[64,34],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1674","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eco-patagonia","8":"category-calafate"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patagonia-argentina.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patagonia-argentina.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patagonia-argentina.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patagonia-argentina.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patagonia-argentina.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patagonia-argentina.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patagonia-argentina.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patagonia-argentina.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patagonia-argentina.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patagonia-argentina.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.patagonia-argentina.com\/images\/chalten_glaciarviedma2.jpg\" "\\"The")
As Osvaldo Soriano\u2019s famous title states, the Earth\u2019s glacier heritage carries in its womb the promise of its own vanishing.Glacier melting serves as a thermometer to measure the effects of global warming.\u00a0<\/strong>This \u2013 as stated by Al Gore in the hypothesis of his film\u00a0An Inconvenient Truth\u00a0<\/em>\u2013 is the\u00a0result of man\u2019s action<\/strong>.\u00a0The recession of the Viedma Glacier<\/strong>, in the Province of Santa Cruz, is the most immediate example, which renovates the environmental concern.<\/p>\n![\"Comparison](\"https:\/\/www.patagonia-argentina.com\/images\/cambioclimatico_greenpeace.jpg\" "\\"Comparison")
<\/strong><\/em>The\u00a0Viedma Glacier<\/strong>, located 30 km (18.5 mi) away from the\u00a0Mount Fitz Roy<\/a>, is a 575 square km (222 sq mi) ice mass belonging to the\u00a0South Patagonic Continental Ice cap<\/strong>, which covers 350 km (217 mi) along the southern mountain range shared by Argentina and Chile. Thirteen large glaciers and 190 minor ones make up this field; the latter ones are inserious danger of extinction,according to\u00a0Ricardo Villalba<\/strong>, Directorof the\u00a0Instituto Argentino deNieves, Glaciares y Ciencias Ambientales de Mendoza\u00a0<\/em>(IANIGLIA) and researcher at the\u00a0Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cient\u00edficas y T\u00e9cnicas\u00a0<\/em>(CONICET). In the scientist\u2019s opinion,\u00a0\u201cmany of the smaller glaciers in Patagonia might disappear in the next 20 or 30 years\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Several](\"https:\/\/www.patagonia-argentina.com\/images\/antartida.jpg\" "\\"Several")
<\/strong>Another event indicating the high speed of ice melting is the\u00a0loosening of a 415 square km (160 sq ft) iceberg from the Antarctic mass<\/strong>\u00a0in the western end of the Wilkins ice shelf. The disintegration, which began last February 28, was detected by satellite images taken by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), an institute that carries out scientific research on the \u201cWhite Continent\u201d.<\/p>\n![\"Sunset](\"https:\/\/www.patagonia-argentina.com\/images\/antartida_marambio_paisaje2.jpg\" "\\"Sunset")
\u201cMelting is faster than expected\u201d, said the scientist, who ascribed the phenomenon to global warming worsening.<\/p>\n