Massively increased ice melt in the high Himalayas because of climate change could seriously jeopardise the flow of water for billions of people in Asia.
The glaciers of the Everest region of the Himalayan massif – home to the highest peak of all – could lose between 70% and 99% of their volume as a result of global warming.
Asia’s mountain ranges contain the greatest thickness of ice beyond the polar regions. But new research predicts that, by 2100, the world’s highest waters – on which billions of people depend for their water supply – could be at their lowest ebb because of the ice loss.
Many of the continent’s great rivers begin up in the snows, fed by melting ice in high-peak regions such as the Hindu Kush, the Pamir and the Himalayas.
Joseph Shea, a glacial hydrologist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu, Nepal, and French and Dutch colleagues report in The Cryosphere journal that they used more than 50 years of climate data and sophisticated computer models of predicted climate change to study the pattern of snowpack and seasonal melt in the Everest region.
Temperature increase
They found a decrease of 20% since 1961, and signs that most, if not quite all, of the stored ice could disappear in the next 85 years.
“The signal of future glacier change in the region is clear: continued and possibly accelerated mass loss from glaciers is likely, given the projected increase in temperatures,” Dr Shea says.
”Our results indicate that these glaciers may be highly sensitive to changes in temperature, and that increases in precipitation are not enough to offset the increased melt.”
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