Glacial Lake Vanishes In Southern Chile

[Kor37 9]

Glacial Lake Vanishes in Southern Chile

AP

Posted: 2007-06-21 07:44:11

SANTIAGO, Chile (June 21) - A five-acre glacial lake in Chile's southern Andes has disappeared - and scientists want to know why.

 

 

What Happened?

 

CONAF / AP

The lake at Bernardo O'Higgins National Park in Chile is seen on the left. The photo on the right, taken in May, shows the crater that remains after it disappeared.

 

Park rangers at Bernardo O'Higgins National Park said they found a 100-feet-deep crater in late May were the lake had been in March. Several large pieces of ice that used to float atop the water also were spotted.

 

"The lake had simply disappeared," Juan Jose Romero, head of Chile's National Forest Service in the southernmost region of Magallanes, said Wednesday. "No one knows what happened."

 

A group of geologists and other experts will be sent to the area 1,250 miles southeast of Santiago in the next few days to investigate, Romero said.

 

One theory is the water disappeared through cracks in the lake bottom into underground fissures. But experts do not know why the cracks would have appeared because there have been no earthquakes reported in the area recently, Romero said.

 

A river that flowed out of the lake was reduced to a trickle.

 

 

http://cdn.news.aol.com/aolnews_photos/06/...621064109990001

 

A 5 acre lake disappeared in just 2 months and there is still ice in the crater???.......Aliens replenishing their water supply???..

[Theunicornhunter 2]

Really Kor, people are always giving the aliens all the credit - it's the lost kingdom at the center of the Earth

[Healer T'Lynne 0]

Really Kor, people are always giving the aliens all the credit - it's the lost kingdom at the center of the Earth

 

Especially with the length and width of the cracks in the lake bed . . .

[Kor37 9]

Global Warming Blamed for Vanishing Lake

By EDUARDO GALLARDO,AP

Posted: 2007-07-03 21:35:11

 

Associated Press Writer

 

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) - Scientists on Tuesday blamed global warming for the disappearance of a glacial lake in remote southern Chile that faded away in just two months, leaving just a crater behind.

 

The disappearance of the lake in Bernardo O'Higgins National Park was discovered in late May by park rangers, who were stunned to find a 130-foot deep crater where a large lake had been.

 

After flying over the lake Monday scientists said they were able to draw preliminary conclusions that point to climate change as the leading culprit for the lake's disappearance.

 

They suggested the melting of nearby glaciers raised the lake's level to the point where the increased water pressure caused part of a glacier acting as a dam to give way. Water in the lake flowed out of the breach, into a nearby fiord and then to the sea, said Andres Rivera, a glaciologist with Chile's Center of Scientific Studies.

 

Rivera, accompanied by an expert from the Chilean Antarctic Institute, flew over the site in a navy airplane, taking hundreds of photographs.

 

"On one side of the Bernardo glacier one can see a large hole or gap, and we believe that's where the water flowed through," Rivera said in a navy communique. "This confirms that glaciers in the region are retreating and getting thinner."

 

He said that the bottom of the vanished lake again has some water, likely from the melting ice.

 

Similar phenomenon have occurred before in the southern Magallanes region.

 

As glaciers retreat lakes form behind natural dams of ice or moraine, earth and stones pushed up by a glacier. Those relatively weak dams can be breached suddenly, causing the lake to drain.

 

The advance and retreat of glaciers is part of the normal dynamics of the Patagonia but climate change was distorting the process, Rivera said.

 

"This would not be happening if the temperature had not increased," Rivera said.

 

The navy communique said the missing lake was the smaller of a two-lake system. The larger one remains but at a lower level.

 

 

 

I find it hard to believe that global warming can make a large lake disappear in just two months.........

[Theunicornhunter 2]

The pressure on the dam could have been building up for years - once it breaks the lake could drain in a relatively short period of time.

 

However, this theory doesn't explain why the water now accumulating in the bottom of the lake doesn't run out.

[trekz 7]

Really Kor, people are always giving the aliens all the credit - it's the lost kingdom at the center of the Earth

 

Especially with the length and width of the cracks in the lake bed . . .

I'm still hoping for the lost kingdom at the center of the Earth theory to be proven in this case!

[Odie 0]

The pressure on the dam could have been building up for years - once it breaks the lake could drain in a relatively short period of time.

 

However, this theory doesn't explain why the water now accumulating in the bottom of the lake doesn't run out.

Maybe the aliens from Mercury did this! :biggrin: