Venezuela’s last glacier in the Humboldt Peak, the second highest peak in the Andes mountains rage of the Merida state, is about to disappear. The Humboldt is one of the prominent summits of Mérida’s Sierra Nevada Park, and its glacier La Corona has only 20 years of existence left, according to scientists.
They have been warning this for some time now, yet they persevere in their quest: they don’t want this to happen without registering it and what this means for this region, still known as the one “with eternal snow”, and the whole planet’s climate.
In a country in emergency like Venezuela, it is obvious that this scientists’ task does not have any institutional or government support. They do the research on their own, in the laboratories of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of the Andes, with no light, nor electric plants to keep the refrigerators and freezers cold in order to preserve the samples. They also face gas shortages; there is not enough paper for the records, nor internet, nor fax. They waterproof their boots with candle wax. They recycle the paper for samples and records.
They work mostly from home.
The Associated Press dedicated the second episode of “What Can Be Saved”, an audiovisual series on climate change, to these Venezuelan scientists.
“Venezuela is going to run out of glaciers. Today there is only one left of the Humboldt and we have to be there when it disappears. Climate change is real and we have to document it and we have to be there. This, in addition to being very tragic, very sad, very special, is a unique opportunity for research and learning,” says Alejandra Melfo, professor of physics at the University of the Andes, the leader of this team of researchers.
“(…) This is something that just can’t wait,” she adds.
Indeed, the fact that glaciers disappear from a territory means that the opportunity to study the effects of rapid climate change – the rapid rise in the planet’s temperatures – is extinguished, as glaciologist Jorge Luis Ceballos explained to CNN, in a piece in which they also speak of glaciers on the verge of extinction in Colombia.
“Glaciers are one of the biggest alarms we have to measure what is happening with climate change; they are a perfect laboratory to measure that phenomenon,” Ceballos added. To lose them, he said, would mean to lose “one of the best laboratories for studying the climate, because they help explain the planet’s temperatures.” Ceballos is an expert from Colombia’s Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies, which produced a report in 2017 that warned that this country’s glaciers could disappear in 30 years.
With the extinction of the La Corona glacier from the Humboldt Peak within 20 years, Venezuela would not only be ahead of its neighbor, but would also be the first country in South America to have completely lost these masses of ice.
That is why researchers at the Institute of Environmental Sciences of the University of the Andes are rushing to study what is happening and what species will remain once the glacier disappears, and the temperature continues to rise.
“The question for us is how lichen, moss plants and the soil will be able to generate new ecosystems at the high speed changes are occurring now,” the team scientist Luis Llambí said to Associated Press.
“We are guaranteeing that all the effort of years will not be lost,” Alejandra Melfo added.
The effort of years is the research that they have done in the faculty and that they now try to sustain in the most adverse conditions, with the fuel of their own will.
In November 2018, journalists Jeanfreddy Gutiérrez and María Fernanda Rodríguez published a thorough piecefor Mongabay Latam, in which they reported that researchers from the Institute of Environmental Sciences of the University of the Andes had not been able to organize a single scientific expedition to the glaciers of Mérida since 2014.
“And this not only means that they cannot study the disappearance of the last of their glaciers, but that they will not be able to continue analyzing the microorganisms that have been trapped under the glacier mass for centuries, a fascinating and complex world that can shed light, without exaggerating, on climate variability and the origins of life on the planet,” they wrote.
The Associated Press report shows that they made it this year. A mission has climbed to the glacier and the moors beneath, to observe native species and record the temperature changes effects.
Getting there isn’t easy: it’s 4940 meters above sea level.
But they still go.
“We do long-term monitoring of how temperature and vegetation are changing over the years. If we don’t document them, no one will even know that many of those species that are unique on the planet may be about to disappear without anyone knowing,” Llambís said.
According to the Mongabay Latam piece, only 0,2 kilometers are left in La Corona glacier. Scientists will keep persevering the research, indeed.
“Deep down, I hope that the country’s situation can improve and that we can continue to do science and that we can continue to train young researchers. And that hope is the hope that keeps me here today. However, my margin of hope is not infinite”, Rosibell Pelayo Escalona, another scientist from Los Andes University added.