In Ayacucho province in Peru’s southern Andes, a three-hour drive from the provincial capital, Huamanga, stands the snowcapped mountain of Rit’ipata, popular among tourists. Every January, high summer in the Southern Hemisphere, groups of young people climb its peak to take photos and play in the snow. But what they don’t know is that the ice they walk on is only temporary. “The most constant snow we saw was in 2005, and only in the highest part [of the mountain],” says Tulia García, director of the Center for Agricultural Development (CEDAP), a sustainable development NGO that works with rural communities in the area. “What remains here is ice that will melt in a few weeks.” Rit’ipata is part of the Chonta range of the Andes, one of 18 mountain ranges in Peru that together are home to 70% of the world’s tropical glaciers. Its name in Quechua means “snow summit,” though this is no longer the case: a study published in 2020 by the National Institute for Research on Glaciers and Mountain Ecosystems (INAIGEM) showed that the mountain range had lost 95% of its snowcap. Jesús Gómez López, director of glacier research at INAIGEM, says high temperatures resulting from climate change have caused the disappearance of more than half of Peru’s glacier surface in just 54 years. According to Gómez López, this process is irreversible; his studies estimate that the icy crown atop the Chonta range, including on Rit’ipata, will be gone forever in about 10 years. “The population living…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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