Climate change has turned Peru's glacial lake into a deadly flood timebomb

[Judi Lynn]

Lake Palcacocha is swollen with water from melting ice caps in the Cordillera Blanca mountains. Below, 50,000 people live directly in the flood path

Dan Collyns in Huaraz, Peru

@yachay_dc
Fri 29 Jun 2018 07.55 EDT

Nestled beneath the imposing white peaks of two glaciers in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, the aquamarine Lake Palcacocha is as calm as a millpond. But despite its placid appearance it has become a deadly threat to tens of thousands people living beneath it as a result of global warming.

A handful of residents of Huaraz, the city below the lake, can recall its destructive power. In 1941 a chunk of ice broke away from the glacier in an earthquake, tumbling into the lake. The impact caused a flood wave which sent an avalanche of mud and boulders cascading down the mountain, killing about 1,800 people when it reached the city.

Today the lake is even more potentially dangerous, swollen with glacial meltwater like an almost-overflowing bathtub. A temperature rise of 0.5-0.8C between the 1970s and the 2000s has seen a third of Peru’s ice caps vanish in the last four decades.

The city’s population has grown too. With more than 150,000 inhabitants, today Huaraz is about 15 times larger than it was during the last deadly landslide.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/29/climate-change-has-turned-perus-glacial-lake-into-a-deadly-flood-timebomb




Lake Palcacocha

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread Judi Lynn