Bolivian authorities warn Titicata, world's highest lake, at dangerously low level

Bolivian authorities warn Titicata, world's highest lake, at dangerously low level
CARLOS VALDEZ
Associated Press Writer
6:35 p.m. EST, November 12, 2009

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Evaporation blamed on global warming has reduced Lake Titicaca, one of the world's highest navigable lakes, to its lowest level since 1949, authorities said Thursday.

Diminished rainfall and a rise in solar radiation have in the past four years led to critically low water levels that now threaten fish spawning areas and plant life, the Lake Titicaca Authority said in a statement.

Titicaca's waters have dropped 81 centimeters (2.65 feet) since April and flora and fauna are apt to suffer damage if they drop another 30 centimeters (one foot), the statement said.

Navy Capt. Jorge Ernesto Espinoza told ATB television that South America's largest lake is receding by 2 to 3 centimeters (about an inch) a week.

The lake, straddling Bolivia and Peru at 3,800 meters (12,493 feet) elevation, is an 8,400 square kilometer (3,240 square mile) oasis on an arid high plain an hour's drive from the Bolivian capital, La Paz.

The lake is fed by rainfall and melt water from glaciers, which scientists say are shrinking rapidly due to global warming and could disappear altogether by mid-century.

About 2.6 million people depend on the lake for their sustenance.

More:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-lt-bolivia-lake-titicaca,0,4643207.story

http://aphs.worldnomads.com.nyud.net:8090/willlou/716/P1010001.jpg

http://www.inkas.com.nyud.net:8090/tours/jpg_files/jpg_photos/titicaca/titicaca_uros_boatman.jpg

http://www.sacred-destinations.com.nyud.net:8090/bolivia/images/titicaca/from-isla-del-sol-cc-jungle-boy.jpg

http://img2.travelblog.org.nyud.net:8090/Photos/22842/141795/t/1004887-Lake-Titicaca-1.jpg http://www.transitionsabroad.com.nyud.net:8090/listings/travel/articles/images/li_reed_boat_lake_titicaca.jpg

http://photo.goliathus.com.nyud.net:8090/bolivia/pictures/map-of-lake-titicaca.png http://www.zonu.com.nyud.net:8090/imapa/americas/Satellite_Image_Photo_Lake_Titicaca_Bolivia_Peru.jpg

it once in my life between La Paz and Lima. It was such a treat. I'm so sorry that the usual sources, the Andes snowpack aren't able to feed the waterways and bodies of water of that often arid land on the altiplano, which is because of global warming.

You know, "Thank Jesus, we got this new house." but it's always Satan or some evil person who took the old house away. God was watching out for the kid who survived the crash, but the rest of them, well I guess God didn't care about them.

So if Global Warming is the cause of the lower water level at Titicaca, when the place is about to spill over a couple of months or a year from now, will that also be Global Warming? Does GW giveth and GW taketh away?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x42773

from 2006:

THOUSANDS of Bolivian villagers living on the fringes of Lake Titicaca have lost homes and crops after weeks of heavy rains that led the Government to declare a state of emergency.Across Bolivia, tens of thousands of people have been hit by floods and landslides and more than 20 have been killed, presenting President Evo Morales with his first natural disaster since he took office last month.Lake Titicaca has been rising about 2.5cm a day in recent weeks, devouring hundreds of metres of the fertile shoreline, where mud-brick cottages stand amid plots of flowering potatoes, peas and pasture.The tiny lakeside village of Belen B was flooded for days after a river burst its banks.

Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake, swelled to a height of 3810.03m earlier this week, just shy of the 3811.28m record set in 1986, according to the government news service ABI.At Guaqui, close to the Peruvian border, port officers said the waters had risen nearly 36cm in a month. It is estimated that for 0.5 cm the waters rise, the lake advances two or three metres into shore.

...going to magically return, and given that this lake gets a major source of its water from glaciers, and those glaciers are disappearing due to the warming of the planet, we can conclude that, indeed, AGW is the reason for this drop in depth.

And when the majority of those glaciers have melted away, you would expect drought to follow.

It would be much easier to glibly ignore reality if you didn't
keep interrupting with logical responses!

:-)

The glaciers are a moderating influence holding rain in them as ice and snow and releasing it steadily. With the loss of glaciers, which has been documented in the area, the lake can be expected to flood in the rainy season more often, and dry up in the dry season.

GW means more extremes of weather and environment. Even seemingly innocuous or neutral changes in the environment are going to have consequences for human and wildlife communities causing them to adjust.

Bolivian glacier 'disappearing'
November 13 2009 at 08:31AM

Chacaltaya, Bolivia - Once home to the highest ski resort in the world and now reduced to a rocky mountainside, Bolivia's Chacaltaya range bears powerful witness to the precipitous melting of glaciers.

The rusting remains of a ski lift now dominate what was once the highest ski-run in the world perched on the Chacaltaya glacier at some 5 300 meters high.

Only a snowy ice cap of some 50 square meters remains of the magnificent Chacaltaya glacier which spread over 1 600 square meters in the 1950s.

"That's all there's left: a little piece of ice that is disappearing and will last no more than a year," said Alfredo Martinez, a veteran guide and founder of the Bolivian Andean Club.

~snip~
The scientists, who have studied Chacaltaya for the past 15-20 years, had forecast it would completely disappear in 2015.

But with accelerated global warming spurring the ice to melt at the rate of six meters per year compared to about a meter in the 1940s, its demise has come six years earlier than expected.

Around Chacaltaya, Bolivia's Royal Cordillera region, which boasts pristine valleys, fields, lakes and waterfalls surrounded by mountains, has lost 43 percent of its snow-capped peaks in the past 33 years.

The same grim scenario can be found at the neighbouring Huayna Potosi mountain (6 088 meters) or the majestic Illimani, which dominates La Paz at 6 462 meters.

For Ramirez, there is only one culprit, climate change, blamed on greenhouse gases that are particularly prevalent in industrialised countries.

Experts say most tropical glaciers in the Andes are doomed to disappear in the medium term due to global warming.

In 2000, Bolivia only emitted 0,35 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, the humanitarian group Oxfam noted in a report published ahead of key UN-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen next month.

And yet, Oxfam warned Bolivia will be hit disproportionately as thousands of Andean farmers and La Paz residents depend on melt waters from the glaciers, which accounts for 15 percent of the capital's supply.

More:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=nw20091113071504799C110024

http://weburbanist.com.nyud.net:8090/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/skiing-bolivia.jpg

Worlds highest ski resort Chacaltaya has officially closed
Jun 11, 2007 at 10:25 PM
Chacaltaya's (5395 m) clacier has melted and the ski resort is closed, so it's no more the highes ski resort in the world. Chacaltaya is located ca. 30 km from La Paz, Bolivia.

http://laundryagency.vox.com/library/post/worlds-highest-ski-resort-chacaltaya-has-officially-closed.html



Original - The glacier was Bolivia's only ski resort and claimed to be the world's highest, the
northernmost ski area in South America as well as the world's most equatorial. It melted in 2009.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Valued_picture_candidates/Chacaltaya_Ski_Resort

ie, the lake is destined to lose a lot of its water regardless.

This crowd loves doom and gloom stories.

Everyone knows that all bad things are because of global warming.

Flooding.

When the glaciers have gone, what do you expect to see after that?

Drought.

In many cases its not warming that destroys the ice, it is a lack of replenishment.

How many of your uncommon floods will it take to keep the levels high enough so that fauna isn't killed?

My sister, friends and I would walk around talking about Lake Titicaca just to be able to say the words.