Chile’s Northern Patagonian ice field is one of the world’s largest temperate ice fields, but photos from space show its glaciers appear to be losing a significant amount of mass.
Twenty-eight exit glaciers flow out of the ice field, and San Quintín is the largest. San Quintín Glacier is situated within Laguna San Rafael National Park and drains west toward the Pacific Ocean. The terminal end of the glacier (left in this image) meets a lake that gets its beige color from glacial flour—the pulverized rock that is ground up by the moving ice. In the photo, hundreds of icebergs surround the glacier’s end, while a stream flows west toward the Golfo de Peñas on the Pacific Ocean.
Image courtesy of NASA.