Park rangers have reported that a five-acre glacial lake has disappeared in Chile’s Magallanes region.

I’m waiting for Al Gore to attribute this disappearance to the failure of the U.S. to sign the Kyoto climate accord. In fact, I’ll bet he wishes he had been able to add it to his “Inconvenient Truths” picture. No doubt it’ll be in the sequel.

But five acres — that seems quite small for a lake, doesn’t it? It’s smaller than a football stadium and most WalMart parking lots. In some parts, they’d call this a pond, if not a puddle, too small even to have a name, apparently. (I live near a tiny lake –reservoir, actually– called Lake Murray, which is 70 hectares (171 acres), or 35 times larger than this one, and it barely shows up on a map.) Ponds and puddles dry up or drain away quite often, especially in areas with highly variable climatic and geologic conditions, such as the southern tip of South America.

Stay tuned.