Spanish
Glaciers, the last line of defense for Chile against periodic droughts, will provide half the water in 2100 compared to now, thus losing their mitigation capacity if the country suffers another megadrought like the one that has lasted for 15 years, according to a study published this Tuesday.
"The rise in temperatures in the scenarios projected for the century will lead to glaciers losing more mass than they gain. Let's say that, steadily throughout the century, they will be receding," explains Álvaro Ayala, from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), to EFE.
This center, the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and the Center for Advanced Studies in Arid Zones of Chile, have concluded that if a drought like the current one affects the country in 2100, the large glaciers in the south of the Andes, in central Chile and in Argentina, will only be able to contribute half as much water as now, as they will have lost between 50 and 80% of their current volume.
"We found that the water contribution from glaciers during the summer is going to be around half of what happened in recent years," warns this hydrology expert. Ayala highlights that once the water from the snow that fell in winter and that stored in the subsoil has been consumed, "glaciers are like the last reserve in nature" whose contribution is especially noticeable at the end of summer, when the mountain rivers are already flowing with a minimum flow. This expert indicates that the current megadrought in Chile "came as a surprise", in a country with periodic, but shorter, episodes of water scarcity. A situation that has been aggravated because there have been hardly any changes in water usage and without sufficient savings policies or consumption management. Francesca Pellicciotti, environmental engineer, points out in a statement from ISTA that climatologists only became aware in 2015 of the severity of the current drought period. "The Chilean megadrought was never predicted in any climate model," it is stated in that note, in which the question of whether we are prepared for future climate disasters is raised. Ayala recalls that for years there have been studies that speak of a progressive desertification from the north to the south of Chile. Furthermore, the study of the megadrought in Chile, whose author is also the Chilean Eduardo Muñoz-Castro and other researchers from Chile, Austria, and Switzerland, has served to begin analyzing that phenomenon, still little studied, in Europe. Although Ayala points out that it cannot be stated that the Alps will end up looking like the driest mountains in southern Europe, he does indicate that there are projections of decreased rainfall and increased temperatures that point in that direction.
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The situation of the smallest, not counted in this study, will probably be even more serious and they will have completely disappeared. Even without taking into account how the evolution of water consumption will be, halving the water supply from glaciers will be a significant additional problem, warns Ayala This Chilean civil engineer explains that the study, published in the journal 'Communications Earth & Environment', starts from the question of what would happen if a megadrought like the current one were to affect the same area at the end of the century, when the glaciers will be much smaller. The last reserve"We found that the water contribution from glaciers during the summer is going to be around half of what happened in recent years," warns this hydrology expert. Ayala highlights that once the water from the snow that fell in winter and that stored in the subsoil has been consumed, "glaciers are like the last reserve in nature" whose contribution is especially noticeable at the end of summer, when the mountain rivers are already flowing with a minimum flow. This expert indicates that the current megadrought in Chile "came as a surprise", in a country with periodic, but shorter, episodes of water scarcity. A situation that has been aggravated because there have been hardly any changes in water usage and without sufficient savings policies or consumption management. Francesca Pellicciotti, environmental engineer, points out in a statement from ISTA that climatologists only became aware in 2015 of the severity of the current drought period. "The Chilean megadrought was never predicted in any climate model," it is stated in that note, in which the question of whether we are prepared for future climate disasters is raised. Ayala recalls that for years there have been studies that speak of a progressive desertification from the north to the south of Chile. Furthermore, the study of the megadrought in Chile, whose author is also the Chilean Eduardo Muñoz-Castro and other researchers from Chile, Austria, and Switzerland, has served to begin analyzing that phenomenon, still little studied, in Europe. Although Ayala points out that it cannot be stated that the Alps will end up looking like the driest mountains in southern Europe, he does indicate that there are projections of decreased rainfall and increased temperatures that point in that direction.
