Climate Change and Darwin
JUNE 9, 1834.
In the morning we were delighted by seeing the veil of mist gradually rise from Sarmiento, and display it to our view. This mountain, which is one of the highest in Tierra del Fuego, has an altitude of 6800 feet. Its base, for about an eighth of its total height, is clothed by dusky woods, and above this a field of snow extends to the summit. These vast piles of snow, which never melt, and seem destined to last as long as the world holds together, present a noble and even sublime spectacle.
Charles Darwin, The Voyage Of The Beagle, Chapter XI
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'Mount Sarmiento from Warp Bay', engraved by T. Landseer as an illustration in FitzRoy's Narrative 1, facing p. 359: see Keynes 1979, p. 113, for the original watercolour, dated 9 June 1834.
Retreat of the Mount Sarmiento glaciars
Strelin et al. (2007): "The Ema Glacier is located at the base of Cerro Cuerno Negro, on the eastern slopes of Monte Sarmiento Massif (Fig. 2:). It fills a large cirque that extends between 900 and 600 m a.s.l. (Fig. 3:) and drains through a steep 250 m high icefall, ending in a 1200 m long glacier tongue (as of December 1994) which calves in a lake herein named Lago Ema at ca. 30 m a.s.l. In December 1994, the lake had a length of 1300 m and a width of 750 m. The glacier tongue retreated 200 m between 1994 and 2001 (reference to Landsat TM satellite image) increasing the length of the glacial lake to 1500 m.