Perito Moreno Glacier Had Largely Held Steady; Science Now Shows Rapid Loss Of Ice Since 2019

For decades, the Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina has looked like an outlier as so many of the world’s other great ice masses melt and waste away. The glacier’s snout — its mighty leading edge — lengthened and shortened, but not by much, at least by glacial standards. Its surface didn’t thin greatly. In fact, it may have even gotten a little thicker.

All that seems to be changing. The Perito Moreno has been thinning at a sharply accelerated rate since 2019, scientists reported on Thursday. And if the thinning doesn’t slow, it could kick-start a series of changes that might cause the ice to shrink even faster.

“Everything that we can see and know lets us believe that irreversible and large-scale glacier retreat is imminent,” said Moritz Koch, a doctoral student in geography and geosciences at Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.

If Mr. Koch and his colleagues’ predictions, published Thursday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, are borne out, they imply a momentous change of fortune for one of the world’s most beloved glaciers. The Perito Moreno is the centerpiece of Los Glaciares National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site visited by hundreds of thousands of people every year.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/climate/argentina-perito-moreno-glacier.html