Seven nations sharing world’s longest mountain range
already impacted by climate change.
Climate change is
already reshaping life and landscapes across the world’s
longest mountain range which extends the length of South
America’s western side, new research has found. Climate
change isn’t just a future threat for the Andes mountain
region, but a present reality that is already occurring,
found the study, published in the Communications Earth &
Environment journal.
An
international team of six scientists from four different
countries collaborated to compare predictions from climate
models with real-world observations of the Andean climate,
natural environment, industries and societies. “We examined
evidence that climate change and its impacts are already
occurring in the Andes, the world’s longest mountain
range, which crosses seven South American nations from
Argentina and Chile in the south, through Bolivia, Peru,
Ecuador, and Colombia, to Venezuela in the north,” says
hydrologist Dr Ana Ochoa-Sánchez from Ecuador’s
University of Azuay. “What we found was that human-induced
climate change is warming all of the Andes. Climate change
is already occurring and noticeably impacting one of the
world’s iconic mountain regions. One of the most
significant impacts is that climate change is likely causing
less precipitation on the eastern side of the mountain
range.
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“Mountain regions are predicted to be among the
most sensitive and vulnerable to human-induced climate
change, with changes causing a cascade of impacts across
South America, says climate scientist Dr Dáithí Stone, at
New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric
Research (NIWA). “Throughout the Andes the climate trends
are causing rapid shrinking of glaciers and reduction in the
accumulation of snow. This results in reduced water flowing
down from the mountains and brings about changes in
ecosystems. This in turn, in multiple countries, affects
food production, industry, health, culture and
societies.”
The
research will improve understanding of future impacts, and
the effectiveness of adaptation, says Dr Stone. “In order to
understand how climate change might affect us in the future,
we need to understand how it is already affecting us. As we
implement more measures to adapt to climate change, future
updates of this study will also be able to evaluate how
effective those adaptation measures have been and how they
might be made more effective.”
The extensive and
diverse Andes, which runs from the Caribbean coast to its
southern tip in Patagonia, means the study advocates for
localised adaptation strategies, informed by scientific
research and indigenous knowledge, says Dr Ana
Ochoa-Sánchez. “The research also stresses the need for
global climate policies to reduce emissions and increase
adaptation to support vulnerable mountain regions, such as
our iconic Andes. The findings highlight that climate change
is not a distant threat but a current crisis already
unfolding across one of the world’s most celebrated mountain
landscapes.”
