Latest news with #Patagonian
National Observer
2 days ago
- Science
- National Observer
New study surfaces explosive risk hidden beneath Antarctic ice
This story was originally published by The Guardian and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration The melting of glaciers and ice caps by the climate crisis could unleash a barrage of explosive volcanic eruptions, a study suggests. The loss of ice releases the pressure on underground magma chambers and makes eruptions more likely. This process has been seen in Iceland, an unusual island that sits on a mid-ocean tectonic plate boundary. But the research in Chile is one of the first studies to show a surge in volcanism on a continent in the past, after the last ice age ended. Global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels is now melting ice caps and glaciers across the world. The biggest risk of a resurgence of volcanic eruptions is in west Antarctica, the researchers said, where at least 100 volcanoes lie under the thick ice. This ice is very likely to be lost in the coming decades and centuries as the world warms. Volcanic eruptions can cool the planet temporarily by shooting sunlight-reflecting particles into the atmosphere. However, sustained eruptions would pump significant greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide and methane. This would further heat the planet and potentially create a vicious circle, in which rising temperatures melt ice that leads to further eruptions and more global heating. Pablo Moreno-Yaeger, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, who led the research, said: 'As glaciers retreat due to climate change, our findings suggest these volcanoes go on to erupt more frequently and more explosively.' The research, which was presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Prague, and is in the final stages of review with an academic journal, involved camping high in the Andes, among active and dormant volcanoes. As ice caps and glaciers melt, the pressure they put on volcanoes is released — and the magma that has built up beneath them is more likely to erupt, leading to a vicious circle of heating. Detailed work on one volcano, called Mocho-Choshuenco, used radioisotope dating to estimate the age of volcanic rocks produced before, during and after the last ice age, when the 1,500-metre-thick Patagonian ice sheet covered the area. Analysis of the minerals in the rocks also revealed the depth and temperature at which the rocks formed. This data revealed that thick ice cover had suppressed the volume of eruptions between 26,000 and 18,000 years ago, allowing a large reservoir of magma to build up 10-15km (6.2-9.3 miles) below the surface. After the ice melted, from about 13,000 years ago, the pressure on the magma chamber was released, gasses in the liquid or molten rock expanded and explosive eruptions followed. 'We found that following deglaciation, the volcano starts to erupt way more, and also changes composition,' said Moreno-Yaeger. The composition changed as the magma melted crustal rocks while eruptions were suppressed. This made the molten rock more viscous and more explosive on eruption. 'Our study suggests this phenomenon isn't limited to Iceland, where increased volcanicity has been observed, but could also occur in Antarctica,' he said. 'Other continental regions, like parts of North America, New Zealand and Russia, also now warrant closer scientific attention.' Previous research has shown volcanic activity increased globally by two to six times after the last ice age, but the Chilean study was one of the first to show how this happened. A similar phenomenon was reported via the analysis of rocks in eastern California in 2004. A recent review by scientists found there had been relatively little study on how the climate crisis had been affecting volcanic activity. They said more research was 'critically important' in order to be better prepared for the damage caused by volcanic eruptions to people and their livelihoods and for possible climate-volcano feedback loops that could amplify the climate crisis. For example, more extreme rainfall is also expected to increase violent explosive eruptions.
Irish Examiner
08-07-2025
- Science
- Irish Examiner
Melting glaciers and ice caps could unleash wave of volcanic eruptions, study says
The melting of glaciers and ice caps by the climate crisis could unleash a barrage of explosive volcanic eruptions, a study suggests. The loss of ice releases the pressure on underground magma chambers and makes eruptions more likely. This process has been seen in Iceland, an unusual island that sits on a mid-ocean tectonic plate boundary. But the research in Chile is one of the first studies to show a surge in volcanism on a continent in the past, after the last ice age ended. Global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels is now melting ice caps and glaciers across the world. The biggest risk of a resurgence of volcanic eruptions is in west Antarctica, the researchers said, where at least 100 volcanoes lie under the thick ice. This ice is very likely to be lost in the coming decades and centuries as the world warms. Volcanic eruptions can cool the planet temporarily by shooting sunlight-reflecting particles into the atmosphere. However, sustained eruptions would pump significant greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide and methane. This would further heat the planet and potentially create a vicious circle, in which rising temperatures melt ice that leads to further eruptions and more global heating. Pablo Moreno-Yaeger, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, who led the research, said: 'As glaciers retreat due to climate change, our findings suggest these volcanoes go on to erupt more frequently and more explosively.' The research, which was presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Prague, and is in the final stages of review with an academic journal, involved camping high in the Andes, among active and dormant volcanoes. Data revelation Detailed work on one volcano, called Mocho-Choshuenco, used radioisotope dating to estimate the age of volcanic rocks produced before, during and after the last ice age, when the 1,500-metre-thick Patagonian ice sheet covered the area. Analysis of the minerals in the rocks also revealed the depth and temperature at which the rocks formed. This data revealed that thick ice cover had suppressed the volume of eruptions between 26,000 and 18,000 years ago, allowing a large reservoir of magma to build up 10-15km below the surface. After the ice melted, from about 13,000 years ago, the pressure on the magma chamber was released, gasses in the liquid or molten rock expanded and explosive eruptions followed. 'We found that following deglaciation, the volcano starts to erupt way more, and also changes composition,' said Moreno-Yaeger. The composition changed as the magma melted crustal rocks while eruptions were suppressed. This made the molten rock more viscous and more explosive on eruption. 'Our study suggests this phenomenon isn't limited to Iceland, where increased volcanicity has been observed, but could also occur in Antarctica,' he said. 'Other continental regions, like parts of North America, New Zealand and Russia, also now warrant closer scientific attention.' Previous research has shown volcanic activity increased globally by two to six times after the last ice age, but the Chilean study was one of the first to show how this happened. A similar phenomenon was reported via the analysis of rocks in eastern California in 2004. The Guardian Read More Tory grandee and Thatcher ally Norman Tebbit dies aged 94
Yomiuri Shimbun
13-06-2025
- Climate
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Huge Ice Falls at Argentina's Perito Moreno Glacier Stir Awe, Concern
Reuters TV via Reuters Ice breaks off Perito Moreno Glacier into Lake Argentina in Los Glaciares National Park in Argentina on April 21, in this combination of screengrabs from video. PERITO MORENO GLACIER, Argentina (Reuters) — The deep cracking sound bursting from within the ice signals the dramatic fall about to happen. Seconds later, a block of ice some 70 meters tall — the size of a 20-story building — collapses from the face of the Perito Moreno glacier into the aquamarine water below. The sight has attracted visitors to Argentina's most famous glacier for years. Standing on platforms facing the ice, they wait for the next crack to split the cool Patagonian air. But recently the size of the ice chunks breaking off — a process called 'calving' — has been starting to alarm local guides and glaciologists, already anxious at a prolonged retreat by Perito Moreno, which had bucked the trend in recent decades by maintaining its mass even as warmer climates spurred faster glacial melting worldwide. 'Ice calving events of this size haven't been very common at the Perito Moreno glacier over the past 20 years,' said Pablo Quinteros, an official tourist guide at Los Glaciares National Park in the southern province of Santa Cruz. 'It's only in the last four to six years that we've started to see icebergs this big,' he told Reuters during a visit in April. The face of the glacier, which flows down from Andean peaks to end in the waters of Lake Argentina, had for decades held more or less steady, some years advancing and others retreating. But in the last five years, there's been a firmer retreat. 'It had been in more or less the same position for the past 80 years. And that's unusual,' said Argentine glaciologist Lucas Ruiz with state science body CONICET, whose research focus is the future of Patagonian glaciers in the face of climate change. 'However, since 2020, signs of retreat have begun to be seen in some parts of Perito Moreno Glacier's face.' He said that the glacier could rebound as it has done before, but that for the moment it was losing between one and two meters of water equivalent per year, which if not reversed could lead to a situation where the loss accelerates. A state-backed 2024 report, coauthored by Ruiz and presented to Argentina's Congress, showed that while Perito Moreno's mass has been overall stable for half a century, the period since 2015 has seen the fastest and most prolonged loss of mass in 47 years, on average losing 0.85 meters per year. Glaciers around the globe are disappearing faster than ever, with the last three-year period seeing the largest glacial mass loss on record, according to a UNESCO report in March. 'You can't grasp immensity of it' Ruiz said instruments his research team used to monitor the glacier had shown an increase in air temperature in the area of around 0.06 C per decade and precipitation decreasing, meaning less accumulation of snow and ice. 'The thing with Perito Moreno is that it took a while, so to speak, to feel the effects of climate change,' Ruiz said. Now, however, the accumulation of ice at the top of the glacier was being outpaced by melting and calving at the bottom. 'The changes we are seeing today clearly show that this balance of forces … has been disrupted, and today the glacier is losing both in thickness and area.' For now, the glacier remains an awe-inspiring attraction for travelers, who board boats to see the calving and the huge icebergs floating around the lake up close. 'It's insane. The most incredible thing I've ever seen,' said Brazilian tourist Giovanna Machado on the deck of one of the boats, which have to be careful of sudden ice falls. 'Even in photos, you just can't grasp the immensity of it, and it's perfect. It's amazing. I think everyone should come here at least once in their lifetime.'
New Straits Times
12-06-2025
- Politics
- New Straits Times
Cristina Kirchner: divisive left-winger tainted by fraud
DURING two decades at the forefront of Argentine politics, Cristina Kirchner inspired love and loathing in equal measure, but rarely indifference. She has made several comebacks over the years – even escaping unscathed from an assassination attempt – but may now have come to the end of her political tether. On Tuesday, the country's Supreme Court upheld Kirchner's six-year prison sentence for a graft conviction and confirmed a lifetime ban on her holding public office. The 72-year-old has five days to present herself to authorities for arrangements to be made for serving her sentence. Kirchner was born in 1953 in the small town of Tolosa, just outside the Argentine capital Buenos Aires. The daughter of a bus driver and a housewife, she often played up her lower middle-class roots, though she could never hide her love of luxury brands and travel. She first came to prominence as one half of the ultimate political power couple with husband Nestor. The pair met at university when they were both law students passionate about Peronism – a leftist ideology based on the legacy of former ruler Juan Peron. Nestor Kirchner became president in 2003, serving one term, before Cristina was elected in 2007. They expected to continue their term-for-term tango, but he died of a heart attack in 2010. Together, the couple served a collective 12 years in the Casa Rosada, the pink presidential palace, with Cristina exiting the top office for the last time in 2015. She later served as vice-president to her former chief of staff Alberto Fernandez. To their working-class base, the Kirchners were saviours after Argentina's 2001 economic meltdown and the social unrest that followed the largest debt default in history. They were seen as standing up for the little guy against bullies both foreign and domestic. Addressing supporters outside her party headquarters after the Supreme Court ruling, she depicted her tenure as a golden era, when Argentine workers "had the highest salaries in Latin America and pensioners had the highest pensions." Her two terms, during a commodities boom, were characterised by protectionist trade policies and major investments in social programs and subsidies, which caused public spending to spiral. Under her stewardship Argentina became a regional bastion of LGBTQ rights, allowing gay marriage in 2010 and passing a gender identity law in 2012. For her detractors, however, Kirchner is a corrupt, overbearing interventionist who steered the country toward economic ruin and rampant inflation with her debt-fuelled spending sprees. One of her major critics is incumbent President Javier Milei, whose budget-slashing austerity policies Kirchner has in turn slammed as inhumane. In December 2022, Kirchner was found guilty of fraudulently awarding public works contracts during her time as president in her southern Patagonian stronghold of Santa Cruz. Just months earlier, at a pro-Kirchner demonstration, a man pointed a revolver in Kirchner's face and pulled the trigger. The gun did not fire. On Tuesday, after Argentina's Supreme Court upheld Kirchner's conviction on appeal, and confirmed a six-year prison sentence that she may ask to convert to house arrest given her age. Kirchner has been defiant throughout, accusing the justice system of persecuting Peronism. Just a week ago, she announced she would seek election to the government of Buenos Aires province in September elections. A win would have given her immunity for the duration of her term.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Chile's salmon farms hope for calmer waters
Chile is the world's second-largest exporter of farmed salmon, and the biggest supplier to the US. In the south of the country a dispute continues over the large number of salmon farms that are located in supposedly protected areas. The port city of Puerto Montt, more than 1,000km (600 miles) south of Chile's capital Santiago, is at the heart of the country's farmed Atlantic salmon industry. At a processing facility on the outskirts of town workers kitted out in white suits, hairnets, facemasks, and blue plastic gloves and boots prepare fresh and smoked salmon for export to the US and Japan. In a spacious meeting room, Fracisco Lobos, the chief corporate officer for the plant's owner – salmon-exporter Multi X – explains how farming the fish has transformed the south of Chile. "Salmon's been part of this region's industrial revolution," he says. "There used to be a lot of poverty in the region, and now many people earn more than in other parts of Chile. "Because of the industry a lot of support services have sprung up, which benefit the families living here, and people have moved here from other parts of the country for work." Atlantic salmon are not native to Chile. Instead, eggs were brought over to Chile from the UK at the end of the 19th Century and released into rivers, lakes and the sea to grow into fish for recreational fishing. Farming the fish in netted, offshore pens then started in the 1970s, before growing substantially ever since. There were 1,343 active salmon farms across southern Chile at the end of last year. In 2024 as a whole, Chile exported 782,076 tonnes of salmon and trout, according to the latest annual figures from the Chile's National Customs Service. The vast majority of this is salmon, but the two fish are counted together in the official data. This was worth $6.4bn (£4.8bn), making it Chile's third-biggest export after copper in first place and fresh fruit. It also means that Chile's salmon exports are only surpassed by Norway's. Some 86,000 people now work directly or indirectly for Chile's farmed salmon industry, according to trade body Salmón Chile. The farms stretch from the Biobío region, which is around 500km south of Santiago, right down to the Magallanes region in the far Patagonian south of the country, and more than 2,000km away from the capital. With global demand for farmed salmon due to grow by 40% by 2033, according to one report, Chilean producers are keen to increase their production. However, it actually fell slightly last year. Salmón Chile's chairman, Arturo Clements, says the government needs to do more to help the industry expand. "For us it's been very difficult to grow, because we have too many regulations, and we have too many conflicts regarding the use of the sea," he says. "What we need is to define a long-term strategy regarding salmon farming." BBC World Service - Chile's salmon farming puzzle Much of the conflict concerns the locations of many of the fish farms, which critics say are highly polluting. More specifically, there are 408 salmon farming concessions – licenses granted by the government that allow a company to operate a salmon farm in a specific area – within supposedly environmentally protected areas in Chile. These include 294 in national reserves, where limited commercial use of natural resources is allowed. And 29 in the more strictly controlled national parks, where business operations are officially not supposed to be permitted. Flavia Liberona is the executive director of Terram, a foundation that promotes sustainable development. In her hot and sticky office in an old building in the centre of Santiago she describes an environmental campaign that she's part of – Salvemos La Patagonia or Save Patagonia. It wants to protect the natural habitat of the entire Chilean Patagonia region. This vast geographic area starts north of Puerto Montt and then extends all the way down to the very base of the country. And it is where most of the salmon farms are located, in its many fjords. "We want the salmon farms to stop operating in the national parks and national reserves," says Ms Liberona. "The salmon farming causes various environmental problems. One is that the fish are kept in cages and fed with pellets. "A lot of the pellets and fish faeces end up on the seabed and that leads to less oxygen which kills the sea life in the ocean underneath the cages, and depending on the current, elsewhere in the sea." When these concerns are put to Mr Clement from Salmón Chile, he explains that there are different categories for the salmon farming concessions. "In terms of concessions in the national parks we have 21 that we aren't using," he says. "We have told the government that we don't want to be there and asked to be relocated but nothing has happened for many years." Regarding salmon farming in national reserves, he says that is a different environment which, according to Chilean law and the rules and regulations they follow, they can operate in. In Chile, the salmon industry is regulated by The Undersecretariat for Fisheries and Aquaculture, a public body that is part of the Ministry of Economy, Development and Tourism. It looks at environmental protection and sustainability, and is also working on a new general aquaculture law to further regulate the sector. Julio Salas Gutiérrez, the Chilean Undersecretary of Fisheries and Aquaculture, tells the BBC that the government is working to remove fish farms from the national parks. "It's not right to claim that the government 'has done nothing for years' regarding the relocation of concessions outside of national parks," he says. "Under the current administration, efforts have been made not only to understand the problem, but also to advance it. "The relocation process itself is usually quite complex, bureaucratic, and takes a considerable number of years, considering the difficulty of relocating these concessions to new areas suitable for aquaculture." Matt Craze is the founder of UK and Chile-based Spheric Research, which studies global seafood markets. He says that Chile's salmon industry would invest more money "if they felt that there was a better regulatory framework, and the government gave some certainty about the areas where they can farm". Yet with a general election due in Chile later this year, the uncertainty may continue at least in the short term. Winemakers finding Trump's tariffs hard to swallow Did Trump really strike Gulf deals worth $2tn? The world's most dangerous country for trade unionists Is the US finally on track to build a high-speed rail network?
