A falling, melting glacier chunk in Peru killed at least 3 people, wounded 50 and caused a tsunami.  More evidence that climate change is continuing to melt the world’s biggest glaciers.

December 2004. Two images of the Yanamarey glacier show a retreat in only 7 years. From Greenpeace.

A huge piece of a glacier broke off and plunged into a lake in Peru, causing a 75-foot (23-meter) tsunami wave that swept away at least three people and destroyed a water processing plant serving 60,000 local residents, government officials said on Monday.

Around 50 people suffered injuries, a disaster the local governor attributed to climate change.

The mass of glacial ice and rock fell into the so-called “513 lake” in the northern Ancash region, causing a ripple effect down the Hualcan, destroying 20 nearby homes.  Investigators said the chunk of ice from the Hualcan glacier measured 1,640 feet by 656 feet.

“Because of global warming the glaciers are going to detach and fall on these overflowing lakes. This is what happened today,” Ancash Governor Cesar Alvarez told reporters, linking climate change to the disappearance of a third of the glaciers in the Peruvian Andes over the past three decades.

A 2009 World Bank-published report warned Andean glaciers and the region’s permanently snow-covered peaks could disappear in 20 years if no measures are taken to tackle climate change.

According to the report, in the last 35 years Peru’s glaciers have shrunk by 22 per cent, leading to a 12 per cent loss in the amount of fresh water reaching the coast – home to most of the country’s citizens.

The ice block tumbled into a lake in the Andes on Sunday near the town of Carhuaz, some 200 miles north of the capital, Lima. Three people were buried in debris.

“This slide into the lake generated a tsunami wave, which breached the lake’s levees, which are 23 meters high — meaning the wave was 23 meters high,” said Patricio Vaderrama, an expert on glaciers at Peru’s Institute of Mine Engineers.

Authorities evacuated mountain valleys, fearing more breakages. It was one of the most concrete signs yet that glaciers are disappearing in Peru, home to 70 percent of the world’s tropical icefields. Scientists say warmer temperatures will cause them to melt away altogether within 20 years.   The glaciers in Peru have lost 22% of their area in the last 27 years according to a study made by the Peruvian Institute of National Resources.

In 1970, not far from Carhuaz, an earthquake triggered an avalanche of ice, rock and mud on the mountain of Huascaran that buried the town of Yungay, killing more than 20,000 people who lived below Peru’s tallest peak, which sits 22,204 feet above sea level.

from LIMA (Reuters) and AFP stories.