Jorge Montt Glacier is a

tidewater glacier The tidewater glacier cycle is the typically centuries-long behavior of tidewater glaciers that consists of recurring periods of advance alternating with rapid retreat and punctuated by periods of stability. During portions of its cycle, a tidewate ...

located in the

Aisén Region Aisén or Aysén may refer to: *Aisén (name), an African name for a boy or a girl Places *Aysén, Chile, a commune in Aysén Province *Aysén Region, one of Chile's administrative divisions *Aysén Province Aysén Province ( es, Provincia de ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

, south of the town of

Caleta Tortel Caleta Tortel is a coastal village ( es, aldea) in Chile. It is the administrative centre of the commune of Tortel and is located between the mouth of the Baker River the largest river in Chile and a small embayment of the Baker Channel. The surr ...

. It lies at the north end of the

Southern Patagonian Ice Field The Southern Patagonian Ice Field ( es, Hielo Continental or '), located at the Southern Patagonic Andes between Chile and Argentina, is the world's second largest contiguous extrapolar ice field. It is the bigger of two remnant parts of the P ...

, within

Bernardo O'Higgins National Park Bernardo O'Higgins National Park () is the largest of the protected areas in Chile, covering an area of in both the Aysén and Magallanes and Antártica Chilena regions. Management of this and other national parks in Chile is entrusted to the ...

. The mouth of

Pascua River The Pascua River is a river located in the Aysén del General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo Region of Chile. In spite of being a short river, its drainage basin is the seventh-largest in the country due to the great size of the O'Higgins/San Martí ...

is located in the vicinity of the glacier calving front. The total drainage area of the glacier is about . The glacier's ice is thinning most at low elevations, where air temperature is the highest. Ice thinning between 1975 and 2000 averaged per year over the entire glacier, and reached per year at the lowest elevations. The glacier calving front experienced a major retreat of in those 25 years as a result of rapid thinning. The glacier calves off icebergs into the

Baker Channel Baker Channel, also known as Calen Inlet, is a channel of Chile located in the Tortel, Aysén del General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo Region. The Baker River discharges into Martinez Inlet, the northern part of this large estuary. It penetrates t ...

. In 2000,

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

wrote: ''Conventional topographic data from the 1970s and 1990s were compared with data from NASA's February 2000 Shuttle Radar Topography Mission to measure changes in the volumes of the 63 largest glaciers in the region over time. The researchers concluded the thinning rate of the Patagonia Icefields more than doubled during the period from 1995 through 2000 versus the period from 1975 to 2000.'' In December 2011, a new study was published. "The study was presented by glaciologist and CECs researcher Andrés Rivera, who focused his investigation on changes in the glacier between February 2010 and January 2011. Using a series of 1,445 photos taken throughout this period, scientists found that the glacier shrank roughly 82 feet each day, receding more than half a mile in the course of the year." Rivera's study showed the glacier's unique rate of retreat was primarily a function of the fjord's peculiar bathymetry; secondarily a result of a warming climate. In 2010 remnants of nothofagus (southern beech) were discovered and later dated, "yielding burial ages between 460 and 250 cal yrs BP." According to Rivera: "The tree-ring results suggest the area was covered by an old-growth forest dominated by Nothofagus betuloides ("coigue de Magallanes" – Magellanic southern beech) with individuals of average age close to 150 years, co-existing for almost 300 years (total chronology length). The radiocarbon ages of between 250 and 450 years BP from two of the sampled trees suggest that the tree ring samples were taken from a mature forest that was destroyed by the advance of Glaciar Jorge Montt during the LIA period."http://www.clim-past.net/8/403/2012/cp-8-403-2012.pdf

References

External links

Aerial photo of Jorge Montt Glacier
* spiegel:d

* spiegel.de: ttp://www.spiegel.de/video/video-1166153.html Video
The melting of Jorge Montt Glacier
{{Glaciers of Chile Glaciers of Aysén Region

See also

References

External links