Anyone familiar with the Dishman Hills park in Spokane knows how tricky lakes can be: the little buggers in this particular area are all named in variations of "Lost Lake" due to their hit-or-miss existence. But these are the mud puddle kind of lakes. Lake in Chile was a full-blown, year-round, take-your-canoe-and-go-fishing kind of lake. Now, it is in the past tense.
A 12-acre lake in Patagonia mysteriously disappeared last month from the Bernardo O'Higgins National Park. Now, local scientists have a theory.
The glacial lake is normally fed by melting ice and snow pack throughout the year, sufficient to keep it full and 130 feet deep. The lake changes throughout the year, depending on seasonal temperatures, but is just a part of the natural rhythm of growth and retreat of the glaciers that feed it. Local scientists now believe that global warming is to blame: higher temperatures translate to more water, which built up pressure on a glacial dam that made up part of the lake wall. This, according to experts, lead to the breach of the dam through an existing crack in the ice, letting the water flow from the lake, to a nearby fjord, and then the ocean.
This seems to be just one other example (or harms story) of the snowballing impact of global warming on natural patterns. For Chilean environmentalists, it could be much more: a rally cry.
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2 comments:
I totally told you about this story like a month ago...... when it happened and was still news. you gotta pick up the pace here on the interesting news stuff. The other theory's on the lake include an earth quake. Also interesting tid bit going off on the global warming bit that lake that vanished didn't even exist 30 years ago. so with that toodles
yeah yeah I know... it wasn't interesting a month ago, though! In any case, scientists are pretty much in consensus on the ice crack story now.
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