The religious festival of the sacrade ice in the Andes no longer uses the ice due to global warming..

Peru depends on the defrost water to nearly all of agriculture. Therefore, it is one of the most sensitive to climate change. The religious festival with 30,000 people in the Andes no longer uses the ice.

Tropical glaciers. 

The northern half of the highest mountain on the planet is so close to the equator that contains ice only on the top, more than five thousand feet above sea level, because of the cold air. But now, even at these altitudes, the air is warmer. And the Andean people already see their reserves of frozen water melting before their eyes. Scientists have warned that with the disappearance of glaciers there will be a shortage of water for the neighborhood and in the future in big cities.
Increased temperature also affects the volcanic activity, as in the case of Tungurahua (135 km south of Quito), who last August reached its peak eruptive since 1999.

In the Peruvian Andes, 800 years ago, the Inca raised their empire.
Changes in climate have always been decisive in the history of mankind. Now, also threaten the windows that allow us to look to the past. Machu Picchu, center of the Inca civilization, is already feeling the effects of changes in rainfall patterns.
The scientists' predictions are that this region will face more and more, periods of extreme weather, extended droughts, which destabilize the soil, followed by torrential rains, causing landslides.

As seen earlier this year, blocked roads, isolated villages, thousands of stranded tourists in the mountains; Machu Picchu custody evidence that the Incas were able to predict times of bad weather. They were able to predict a year of arrival of El Niño only watching the stars, one method that has been confirmed by modern astronomy.

The Incas:

The name El Niño is a reference to the Christ child because it occurs close to Christmas in some years, water from the Pacific coast of Peru, is warmer, causing changes in climate across the continent. People still enjoy the valley's water system deployed by the Incas. But from Venezuela to southern Peru, the tropical Andes are losing ice. The warming has changed the El Niño, a phenomenon that has always existed, but is more frequent and intense. And the consequence is that the rain fell and the heat increased which causes the glaciers melt much faster.

The ritual consists in climbing the mountains to search the holy ice above 5.000m above sea level. The problem is that this glacier ends at 5300 meters and is still shrinking. This, scientists say, means that in 20 years it will have completely disappeared, along with all the ice in the tropical Andes below 5400 meters.
People of all ages go through the darkness into the early morning light reveals the contours of the barren path, about 30 thousand people. It is the biggest pilgrimage of the native peoples of the Americas. Many others have turned cold night up there, on top of the glacier, talking. The topic: the meaning of life.
Until recently, all these confraternities descended bringing ice blocks, ice sacred, which was taken to the city of Cuzco to be blessed in another religious party, the Corpus Christi.

Only three years ago, have the brotherhoods realized that the ice before it reached the site had already collected more than a mile, uphill. Then, the withdrawal of the ice was prohibited so they could preserve what they have most sacred, that is water. And so the tradition does not accelerate a process that nature is already doing too fast. They haven’t heard this from scientists. They are seeing with their own eyes that the ice is decreasing.