Un lago en Chile, en la región de Magallanes, DESAPARECIO de un día para otro.
Tenía el tamaño de diez canchas de fútbol (entre 10 y 12 hectáreas).
[4 de Julio, 2007: ¿Solucionaron el enigma?
21.6.07
Desapareció un lago en Chile
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Missing: Large lake in southern Chile Wed Jun 20, 6:44 PM ET
A lake in southern Chile has mysteriously disappeared, prompting speculation the ground has simply opened up and swallowed it whole.
The lake was situated in the Magallanes region in Patagonia and was fed by water, mostly from melting glaciers.
It had a surface area of between 4 and 5 hectares (10-12 acres) -- about the size of 10 soccer pitches.
"In March we patrolled the area and everything was normal ... we went again in May and to our surprise we found the lake had completely disappeared," said Juan Jose Romero, regional director of Chile's National Forestry Corporation CONAF.
"The only things left were chunks of ice on the dry lake-bed and an enormous fissure," he told Reuters.
CONAF is investigating the disappearance.
One theory is that the area was hit by an earth tremor that opened a crack in the ground which acted like a drain.
Southern Chile has been shaken by thousands of minor earth tremors this year.
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Culprit in Chile lake's vanishing: climate change?
By EDUARDO GALLARDO
The Associated Press
SANTIAGO, Chile — Scientists on Tuesday blamed global warming for the disappearance of a glacial lake in remote southern Chile that faded away in two months, leaving just a crater behind.
The disappearance of the lake in Bernardo O'Higgins National Park was discovered in late May by park rangers, who were stunned to find a 130-foot-deep crater where a large lake had been.
After flying over the lake Monday, scientists said they arrived at preliminary conclusions that point to climate change as the leading culprit in the lake's disappearance.
The scientists suggested the melting of nearby glaciers raised the lake's level to where the increased water pressure caused part of a glacier acting as a dam to give way. Water in the lake flowed out of the breach, into a nearby fiord and to the sea, said Andres Rivera, a glaciologist with Chile's Center of Scientific Studies.
Rivera, accompanied by an expert from the Chilean Antarctic Institute, took hundreds of photographs over the site.
"On one side of the Bernardo glacier one can see a large hole or gap, and we believe that's where the water flowed through," Rivera said. "This confirms that glaciers in the region are retreating and getting thinner."
He said that the bottom of the lake again has some water, likely from the melting ice.
Similar phenomena have occurred in the southern Magallanes region in Patagonia.
The advance and retreat of glaciers is part of the normal dynamics of the Patagonia but climate change was distorting the process, Rivera said.
"This would not be happening if the temperature had not increased," Rivera said.
Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company
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