In a new publication authors from Argentina, Chile and Austria analyzed four decades of surface change (1985–2024) on 229 debris-covered glaciers in the Central Andes of Argentina. At the regional scale, the share of the glacier surface covered by rock debris increased by 20%, the end-of-summer snowline rose by 181 m, and a growing number of glaciers now reach the end of summer with no snow cover at all. Most of this change occurred after 2009 and is associated mainly with the precipitation deficit of the ongoing Central Andes Megadrought, which has affected the region for more than fifteen years, and to a lesser extent with rising air temperature. The study also introduces ANDESMAG, a new open-source glacier-monitoring tool written in Python that can be applied to other mountain ranges worldwide.

First author Juan Cruz Ghilardi Truffa is a doctoral researcher at IANIGLA-CONICET, Argentina, and visited IGF during a secondment in the context of the Highlands 3 project.

Published open access in the Journal of Glaciology: https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2026.10217