14 DAY TRIAL // NASA astronauts with the Expedition 38 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have recently snapped this vast panorama of the Southern Patagonia Ice Field, the largest temperate ice sheet in the Southern Hemisphere. Patagonia is a geographical region in both Argentina and Chile, occupying the southern tip of South America.
This panorama focuses on the end of the Andes Mountains and showcases the 13,000-square-kilometer (5,000-square-mile) expanse of ice. Three glacial lakes are clearly visible in the image, immediately below the ice sheet, resembling wider fjords. Other lakes, too small to be seen here, dot the landscape all around, including in the nearby mountains.
In the past, during the last glaciation, the ice sheet grew to such sizes that it filled these lakes up many times. This was made possible by the fact that the storms developing in the southern sector of the Pacific Ocean bring between 2 to 11 meters (6.5 to 36 feet) of snowfall here every year. Additionally, average global temperatures during the last Ice Age were much lower than they are today.
Geologists also argue that the tongues of the glacier, still seen today spreading towards the left-hand side of this image, once extended upwards as well, towards the shores of the Pacific Ocean. The ice field is currently made up of 63 glaciers, all of which are showing signs of retreat. Overall, this ice sheet is losing 13.5 cubic kilometers (3.2 cubic miles) of ice annually.