Oil on Canvas
24” x 36” – January 2018
The term “Tropical Glacier” may seem somewhat counter-intuitive to those unfamiliar with their presence, but they exist because temperature decreases substantially with altitude, allowing precipitation to fall as snow, which accumulates and pressurizes over time as ice. However, as temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, the melting of Tropical Glaciers is due to worsen over the coming decades. This reality threatens aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems as well as the food and water security for tens to hundreds of millions of people.
Colombia has six remaining designated glaciers, in four distinct glacierized areas. The four areas are the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the Sierra Nevada de El Cocuy, Nevado del Huila volcano and three glaciated volcanoes within Los Nevados National Park (Nevado del Santa Isabel, Nevado del Tolima and Nevada del Ruiz). The volcanoes of Los Nevados National park and Nevado del Huila are part of the Cordillera Central of the Andes, Sierra Nevada de El Cocuy is part of the Cordillera Oriental of the Andes and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is a coastal mountain range independent from the Andes. These glaciers have been losing ice mass for more than 150 years, since the “Little Ice Age”(LIA), but the scale and speed of this glacial melt has grown exponentially over the past 20-50 years.
Tropical mountain glaciers are rapidly melting around the world (up to 99% are in South America), but those that remain in Colombia could be entirely gone before 2050.
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