Brüggen Glacier in southern Chile is the largest western outflow from the Southern Patagonian Ice Field and, unlike most glaciers worldwide, advanced significantly since 1945. From 1945 to 1976, Brüggen surged 5 km across the Eyre Fjord, reaching the western shore by 1962 and cutting off Lake Greve from the sea.
The San Quintín Glacier is the largest outflow glacier of the Northern Patagonian Ice Field in southern Chile. Like many glaciers worldwide during the twentieth century, San Quintín appears to be losing mass and possibly retreating.
The icefields of Patagonia, located at the southern end of South America, are the largest masses of ice in the temperate Southern Hemisphere (approximately 55,000 square kilometers).
Researchers from NASA and the University of California, Irvine (UCI) have gained an unprecedented view of ice melting on the floating undersides of glaciers. In the process, they detected the fastest ongoing rates of glacier retreat ever observed in West Antarctica.
The Northern Patagonian Ice Field (NPIF), centered near 47°S, 73.5°W, is the smaller of two remnant ice masses crowning the Andes Mountains of lower South America. The NPIF is a vestige of an extensive ice sheet that covered much of Patagonia just over a million years ago. Today, with its glaciers largely in retreat and only an area of 4,200 sq km, it is still the largest continuous mass of ice outside of the polar regions.
NIWA scientists stated that this glacier had retreated by 5 kilometers (about 3 miles) over the previous three decades. They also stated that New Zealand glaciers on the whole had lost 5.8 cubic kilometers (roughly 1.4 cubic miles) over the same time period.
The Southern Patagonian Icefield of Chile and Argentina hosts several spectacular glaciers—including Grey Glacier located in the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. This glacier, which in 1996 had a measured total area of 270 square kilometers and a length of 28 kilometers (104 square miles in area, 17 miles long), begins in the Patagonian Andes Mountains to the west and terminates in three distinct lobes into Grey Lake (upper image).