Peru's glacier meltdown threatens water supplies

摘要

As glacial meltwater trickles down mountainsides in the Andes, some places in Peru may already be seeing temporary increases in water supply, according to new research published in ES&T (pp 6955-6960). But as the ice disappears, researchers say, so will the water that flows from it, and people will be hit especially hard during the dry summers when glaciers normally release water. How severe will local shortfalls be, and how soon will they affect millions of people in South America?rnIn the city of La Paz (Bolivia) and its suburb El Alto, more than 2 million people get about a third of their drinking water from glaciers—and those glaciers have shrunk by more than half since the 1960s, according to Walter Vergara, a World Bank specialist on climate change in Latin America.