Global Warming in Peru
Past Global Warming Produced Monster Penguins - 6/25/07
Scientists have discovered fossil remains of a giant species of penguin that lived some 40 million years ago in what is now Peru. Coupled with the finding of a smaller species from the same time period, the remains reveal that early penguins responded differently to natural climate change than scientists would have expected.
Excavating skulls and partial skeletons in the coastal desert of Peru, North Carolina State University researcher Julia Clarke and colleagues, discovered two extinct penguin species dating from the middle and late Eocene period, 42 and 36 million years ago, one of the warmest periods of global climate over the past 65 million years.
The larger penguin, Icadyptes salasi, stood at over five feet tall with a seven-inch beak, while the smaller species, Perudyptes devriesi, was comparable in size to the living king penguin.
The existence of the larger penguin species during a "greenhouse" period came as a surprise to researchers who expected warmer temperatures to produce smaller penguins.
"Paleontologists generally assume that species moving from cold to warm climates become smaller, as the animals do not need to conserve heat," explained a release from PNAS. "It is therefore surprising to find giant penguin fossils close to the equator, especially in the waning days of a greenhouse Earth.
Global Warming Threatens Double Trouble for Peru - 2/10/07
The ice atop Cordillera Blanca, the largest glacier chain in the tropics, is melting fast because of rising temperatures, and peaks are turning brown. The trend is highlighting fears of global warming and, scientists say, is endangering future water supplies to the arid coast where most Peruvians live.
Glaciologists consider the health of the world's glaciers an indicator of global warming and they warn that what is happening in the Andes signals trouble ahead.
"To me it's the rate of ice loss that's a real concern," because when melting accelerates, the ice cannot replenish itself, said Lonnie Thompson, a leading glacier expert at Ohio State University.
Thompson, a geologist monitoring glacier retreat on the Andes, Himalayas and Kilimanjaro, said tropical glaciers are melting all over the world because of rising temperatures "and where we have the data to prove it, the rate of ice loss is actually accelerating."
In Peru, home to 70 percent of Earth's tropical glaciers, the Andes mountains have lost at least 22 percent of their glacier area since 1970 and the melt is speeding up, according to Peru's National Resources Institute, INRENA, a government agency.
Glacial Snow Disappearing in the Andes - 7/24/99
The increase in global temperatures during the past 27 years has caused the loss of some 12 billion cubic metres of snow from the glaciers of the Peruvian Andes, according to experts here.
The melting of the glaciers from global warming is a worldwide problem, but in the Andes mountain range, which traverses South America like a spine along the Pacific Ocean, the problem is worse than in other parts of the planet.
Benjamin Morales, president of the Andean Institute of Glaciology and Geo-ecology, explained that the glaciers were not just reserves of fresh water and molders of the landscape, but also acted as regulators of the world's climate. ''The reduction of water sources and changes in regional weather patterns increase the danger of the advance of desertification - that is to say, the advance of the dry, barren areas on the coast and mountain ranges of Peru,'' Morales said.
In 1998, there were 311 natural disasters, compared to 179 the previous year, with a sum total of 126.7 million people affected and 59,261 peopled killed, according to the Red Cross report. Some 25 million people were forced to abandon their homes as a result of floods, droughts, deforestation and soil sterilisation, the organisation added.
