Bolivia’s Chacaltaya Glacier was once the highest ski resort in the world. It has been in existence for more than 18,000 years but one day it officially vanished. The start of the meltdown can be traced to mid-1980s. However, the rate of thaw tripled in the last 10 years as a result of accelerated climate change. In 1998 a leading glaciologist, Dr. Ramirez, predicted the complete disappearance of Chacaltaya Glacier by 2015. This tallied with the 2007 research finding of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which predicts the total disappearance of most of Latin America’s tropical glaciers between 2020 and 2030 – unfortunately, that prediction has come 6 years earlier.
