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News > Science and Tech

Mexico's Glaciers Reduced to Puddles in Ten Years: Scientists

  • Since 1958, Mexico’s glaciers have been a point a study and, along side a series of climatic changes.

    Since 1958, Mexico’s glaciers have been a point a study and, along side a series of climatic changes. | Photo: EFE

Published 29 March 2018
Opinion

Scientists say that within five to ten years, Mexico’s monstrous glaciers will be reduced to piles of ice.

Mexico might as well kiss their glaciers goodbye, scientists say, as the balmy winds of climate change over the last 60 years are pushing the icy structures to the edge of extinction.

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Since 1958, Mexico’s glaciers have been a point of study and, alongside a series of climatic changes, the effects of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change can be seen on the icy surfaces.

According to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) representative, Hugo Delgado Granados, within ten years, Mexico’s monstrous glaciers will be reduced to piles of ice.

Delgado, director of the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and an experienced glaciologist said, "To see it in a more illustrative way, the disappearance of glaciers in Mexico has been taking place as the regional temperature has increased in the country, the freezing temperature that allows the ice to remain on the snowy peaks of our volcanoes is reaching a level that will soon exceed the summits, which means that Mexican glaciers will have no way to survive.”

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Although it’s difficult to predict, if general glacial retreat continues at this rate, Mexico’s icy mountains will disappear completely. Already at least one glacier, the structure located nearest the Popocatepetl volcano, has been declared extinct, Delgado said.

The disappearance of the natural structures can have global consequences, the scientist warned, as one by one the icy surfaces which once reflected the ultraviolet rays melt away, sun rays are absorbed by the earth and the world’s temperature will rise.

Water reserves will be dried up and extreme droughts will follow.

"The Iztaccíhuatl volcano still has some ice bodies in the belly and chest, but very likely in five or 10 years they only see themselves as bodies of ice and also declare themselves as extinct, it is difficult to make an exact forecast, but if the patterns of glacial retreat follow, it will disappear," said Delgado.

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