Jorge Montt Glacier

Italy

Jorge Montt Glacier is a tidewater glacier located in the Aisén Region of Chile, south of the town of Caleta Tortel. It lies at the north end of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, within Bernardo O'Higgins National Park. The mouth of Pascua River is located in the vicinity of the glacier calving fro

nt. The total drainage area of the glacier is about 510 km2 (200 sq mi). The glacier's ice is thinning most at low elevations, where air temperature is the highest. Ice thinning between 1975 and 2000 averaged 3.3 m (11 ft) per year over the entire glacier, and reached 18 m (59 ft) per year at the lowest elevations. The glacier calving front experienced a major retreat of 8.5 km (5.3 mi) in those 25 years as a result of rapid thinning. The glacier calves off icebergs into the Baker Channel. In 2000, NASA wrote: Conventional topographic data from the 1970s and 1990s were compared with data from NASA's February 2000 Shuttle Radar Topography Mission to measure changes in the volumes of the 63 largest glaciers in the region over time. The researchers concluded the thinning rate of the Patagonia Icefields more than doubled during the period from 1995 through 2000 versus the period from 1975 to...

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