Tropical glaciers are losing ice more rapidly than most other regions worldwide, and the Quelccaya Ice Cap in Peru’s Andes Mountains, the largest tropical glacier, is no exception. For 50 years, The Ohio State University scientists have monitored the glacier, with NASA Landsat satellite imagery revealing that El Niño events have caused it to lose approximately 58% of its snow cover and 37% of its total area.

Using satellite data, Kara Lamantia, a Ph.D. candidate at Ohio State’s School of Earth Sciences, developed a code to track how temperature and snowfall patterns during El Niño wet seasons are impacting the glacier. “In the years where there are El Niños, the snow-covered area is drastically smaller, like 50 percent or more smaller, than the previous year. It’s a concern because there is no accumulation happening in that wet season, so there’s not as much snowfall,” Lamantia explained. She noted that El Niño winters bring warmer, drier conditions to southern Peru, accelerating glacial retreat. 

El Niño, part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) system that alternates with La Niña every 2 to 7 years, drives significant climatic changes in the eastern and central tropical Pacific Ocean. Lamantia’s research provides a critical tool for analyzing snow cover data weekly, avoiding the risks of field expeditions to the glacier, which sits at an elevation of 18,600 feet (5,680 meters). 

Lamantia’s mentor, Lonnie Thompson, a distinguished professor of Earth Sciences and senior researcher at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, emphasized the glacier's importance as a climate indicator. “We’ve really been able to document not only the history that’s in the ice but how the ice is responding to climate change today,” Thompson said. His decades of work, including more than 50 expeditions to retrieve ice cores under extreme conditions, have provided invaluable insights into Earth’s climate history.

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