The world's largest tropical ice sheet is supposedly shrinking because of rising temperatures, according to a study by Dartmouth College.
Researchers from the college shows that Peru's Quelccaya ice cap is shrinking because of a "warming climate," according to one of the study's authors, Meredith Kelly.
The glacier sits 18,000 feet above sea level in the Andes and is among the largest tropical ice sheets in the world.
Research was published in the journal Geology this week.
Before the study other factors were debated, like snow, solar irradiance, along with other factors. The researchers were able to confirm that temperature is the main reason however.
Researchers came to their conclusion based on the rate at which the ice cap expanded and retreated over the last millennium by merging field mapping with beryllium-10 surface exposure dating technique and the ice cores, according to the study.
"This is an important result since there has been debate about the causes of recent tropical glacial recession, for example, whether it is due to temperature, precipitation, humidity, solar irradiance or other factors," said Kelly. "This result agrees with Professor Thompson's earlier suggestions that these tropical glaciers are shrinking very rapidly today because of a warming climate."
The World Glacier Monitoring Service confirmed that around 0.6 meters of water have been lost from nine mountain ranges across the world between the last two or three years, according to the study.
Not all scientist completely agree with the study however.
"I actually believe that finding is probably accurate, but I don't see that they make a compelling case for that with this study," said Douglas R. Hardy of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who worked extensively on Quelccaya, to The New York Times.
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