Himalayan glaciers threaten to retreat rapidly | Sciences

06/20/2023, 14:38

| Reading time: 2 minutes

Climate change is also affecting the highest regions on Earth: 80 percent of the current volume of glaciers in the Hindu Kush-Himalayas could disappear by 2100, according to a report published by the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in the Nepalese capital. Kathmandu. Since 2010, glaciers have been retreating 65 percent faster than in the previous decade. Snow cover is also decreasing.

The Hindu Kush-Himalayan region spans a large area from Afghanistan, including India, Nepal and China to Myanmar. As in other glacial regions, the potential consequences of ice and snow loss are initially more frequent and intensified floods and landslides. In the long term, water shortages are feared down the valley, where glaciers feed many rivers, the report said. Mountain waters feed major rivers like the Ganges, Indus, Mekong, and Yangtze.

Glaciers as an important source of water

She added that the ice and snow in the region is an important source of water for 12 rivers in 16 Asian countries, which in turn provide fresh water to many people. “Two billion people in Asia depend on the water from the glaciers and snow here,” said Isabella Kozel, deputy director of the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, in a statement accompanying the report. The consequences of losing this permafrost region cannot be predicted.”

Action must be taken now, Kozel says: “There is still time to save this important region, but only if rapid and far-reaching emissions reductions begin immediately.” “Ice reacts more quickly and irreversibly to warming than previously thought,” said International Cryosphere Initiative (ICCI) President Pam Pearson, according to the announcement.

Incidentally, the South Colon Glacier (SCG) of the world’s tallest mountain Everest in the Himalayas on the Nepalese side may have lost its ice by mid-century, a research team led by Marius Potocki of the University of Maine wrote in the Journal of Climate and Atmospheric Sciences. There over thousands of years it is rapidly shrinking, as shown by analyzes of cores drilled from more than 8,000 meters above sea level.