A Future of Retreating Glaciers in the Himalayas

https://eos.org/articles/a-future-of-retreating-glaciers-in-the-himalayas

Source:  By T. V. Padma, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: India’s first regional climate change assessment warns of accelerated glacier melt. ...Climate change has hastened glacial melting across the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, home to some of the world’s tallest peaks, including Mount Everest. According to India’s first assessment of climate change [https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811543265], the country’s glaciers—and water resources—will be at further risk without local actions. The Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH) are a 3,500-square-kilometer stretch of mountains that span eight countries. The region is called the “Third Pole,” as it contains the largest reserve of freshwater outside the polar regions. Its glaciers feed 10 large Asian rivers, including the Ganges, Mekong, and Yangtze. Air over HKH warmed at a rate of 0.2℃ each decade from 1951 to 2014 and at the even higher rate of 0.5℃ per decade at elevations higher than 4,000 meters, according to the report [https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-981-15-4327-2_11], prepared by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MOES) and released in June. The assessment explained that several areas, with the exception of the high-elevation Karakoram Himalayas, saw declining snowfall and retreating glaciers during the past half century. The report projected that even with the Indian government’s commitment to mitigate greenhouse gases by 2030, the Indian Himalayas could warm by 2.6℃–4.6℃ by 2100....