The Andes Mountain range runs along the western margin of South America for ~7500 km, from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, next to the Caribbean Sea, to Cape Horn, at the southern tip of the continent. Based on structural differences, the Northern Andes (11ºN-1ºS), Central Andes (1º-47ºS) and Southern Andes (47º-68ºS) have been differentiated. In the Central Andes the mountain range is divided into Western and Eastern Andes, between which the Altiplano, a plateau of 300x500 km and 3800- 4900 m surrounded by peaks that reach 6000 m in altitude. Only the Himalayas and Tibet are higher and larger than Andes-Altiplano. Glaciers are preserved on many peaks of the Andes, and on their slopes, there are moraines revealing a much larger glacial extent in the past. Today, in the deglaciated areas there are extensive periglacial landscapes. However, the extent to which altitude and latitude...

The Coropuna volcanic complex (15º31’S, 72º39’W; 6377 m a.s.l.) is located on the western slope of the Peruvian Andes. It comprises several stratovolcanoes whose summits exceed 6,000 m in elevation and are covered by the most extensive glacial system in the tropical zone (40 km² as of 2024). These glaciers, which may have persisted throughout the Pleistocene, likely descended multiple times to the surrounding Altiplano, potentially following the ~100 ka cyclicity inferred from proglacial sediments of Lake Junín over the past ~700 ka. Cosmogenic exposure dating indicates that around ~14 ka, Coropuna's glaciers descended to altitudes below the Altiplano (<4,000 m), coinciding with the transgressions of paleolakes in the Bolivian Altiplano and a southward displacement of the Intertropical Convergence Zone driven by Northern Hemisphere cooling. According to reconstructions from the B...