Energy/water nexus: Patagonia

Frequent readers of this site know the speech by heart: A warming climate means dramatic shifts in where and when fresh water is available for any purpose, most notably direct human use, agriculture, and electricity generation. One of the greatest potential impacts of this shift, worldwide, is triggered by the disappearance of glaciers that provide fresh water during summers. The glaciers act as natural dams, in effect, storing large amounts of water as snow and ice during the winter and then releasing it months later. Most estimates I’ve seen say that roughly one billion people around the world are highly dependent on such water flows from glaciers. One billion people.

This is why I keep saying that water supply is the primary way in which climate chaos will impact human beings. There will be impacts from rising sea levels and increased total destructive power of storms[1], but shifts in the availability of fresh water, whether from changes in rainfall patterns (as we’ve seen in parts of the US and Australia in recent years) or the disappearing glacier effect.

All of which is prelude to some new information about the state of glaciers in South America, as explained in Chilean Glaciers Melting at Unprecedented Rates:

The latest research expedition to the Southern Patagonia Ice Field revealed that alpine glaciers in the Chilean and Argentine Andes are disappearing at much faster rates than previously anticipated by the scientific community.

A preliminary analysis by a team of scientists from NASA and Chile’s Valdivia-based Center of Scientific Studies (CECS), which commenced an expedition to the Ice Field in October 2008, sheds light on the alarming speed at which the glaciers are depleting.

The scientists discovered that the masses of ice in the Patagonia are melting in larger proportions and in much higher alpine zones than in any other part of the world, including Alaska and the Himalayas. Glacier ice accounts for around 75 percent of the world’s fresh water.

“The loss of ice mass in the higher zones is the really new phenomenon,” said Gino Casassa, a CECS glaciologist. “At least this is what we are seeing with the preliminary results which we have just received.”

Until recently, it was believed that glacial loss occurred from lower areas, and that snowfall on the higher sections of glaciers would compensate for loss of ice at lower altitudes.

“One hypothesis we put forward was that there could be a positive balance of ice in the high zones because of higher rates of snowfall in these areas,” said Casassa.

But with ice thinning high up and down low, too, loss in glacial mass in Patagonia is likely to be much greater than what has previously been calculated by scientists.

…

The higher temperatures associated with glacier meltdowns and climate change are largely caused by CO2 or “greenhouse gas” emissions. Chile’s failure to develop a sensible renewable energy policy has resulted in a green light to highly-polluting coal and diesel fuel energy production.

State authorities confirm that the nation’s CO2 emissions will quadruple in the next 20 year if no mitigating actions are taken.

Feel free to add your own 100 decibel commentary about the last two paragraphs I quoted above. You’ve heard my rants on such things far too many times already.

[1] By “total destructive power of storms” I’m referring to the measure Kerry Emanuel pioneered, hurricane power dissipation, which is essentially the sum, over a season, of the power of each hurricane, which is, in turn, a function of it’s maximum wind speed, size, and longevity. See Chris Mooney’s description of Emanuel’s work beginning on page 139 of his excellent book Storm World. In general, I think Emanuel’s metric for gauging a season makes far more sense than simply counting the number of storms that fall into each category on the familiar one-to-five Saffir-Simpson scale.